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FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 



BY 

F. HALE 



NEW YORK 
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PUBLISHERS 



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FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

AsKABAD, 15th August 1913. 
Dear M., — You are wondering, I suppose, what 
has happened to me since I left London on the 
7th : whether I missed the train at Victoria, or 
~ took the wrong one at Flushing : whether I dallied 
^ in Berlin, or was held up in Warsaw : how, know- 
ing no Russian, I contrived to get over the long 
^ journey through Southern Russia to Rostov, and 
22 so along the northern side of the Caucasus and 
r-i down the western shore of the Caspian Sea to 
^ Baku, the port of outset for the Middle East. 
§ That five days' orgy o| lojjbmotion, with the 
■^ delightsome twelve hours' crossing to Krasno- 
vodsk in a clean well-equipped steamer, and the 
^ final twenty- one hours in a leisurely journey south- 
* eastward by the Transcaspian Railway that 
brought me here to Askabad, come back in 
snatches like the brief inconsequent episodes that 
stand out from a night's dreaming. Isolated 
pictures rise up and glide past in memory : the 
glint of the sun on the chestnut backs of a plough- 
ing team in Westphalia — the conversation in the 
dining-car as we dashed along through birch 
groves in Hanover— the cosmopolitan women of a 

A 



2 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Berlin cafe, and the rotund, spectacled gendarmes 
of the Friedrichstrasse — little bowler-hatted ill- 
shaven men in the streets of the Polish capital, 
and the poor at the doors of the half-eastern 
churches there — in Russia, the heavy-booted and 
belted giants of railway officialdom, the close- 
cropped heads and great beards of the men, the 
blank rusticity of the pale-faced blue-eyed country 
girls at the countless little railway stations where 
the engines are watered and the passengers re- 
freshed — and again, the lifeless immensity of the 
plains on a Sunday, with great stretches of wheat 
and oats and maize relieved by the golden stream 
of field on field of sunflowers with their heads 
bowed eastwards. 

Impressions of personalities, too, detach them- 
selves here and there from the confused memory 
of strange types and foreign tongues. Brief 
acquaintances formed on the basis of a common 
speech are recalled with grateful interest. On the 
way to Berlin I met an English schoolboy off to 
Vienna for his holidays, and his cheery talk made 
me home-sick, for I was not to hear the like of it 
for another five years. For two whole days of 
travelling in Russian trains I had the company 
of an American, whose terse reflections on things 
in{ general, and on Muscovite methods of agri- 
culture in particular, did much to alleviate the 
discomfort of a sooty and ill-lighted sleeping-car. 
On the Caspian, too, I was lucky enough to meet 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 3 

a Russian officer who spoke French. I had always 
imagined that French was a second language to 
most educated Russians, but on both my journeys 
across their southern country I met with only two 
or three who had a knowledge of any tongue but 
their own, which can hardly be called an inter- 
national speech. 

As a matter of necessity, of course, the ordinary 
routine of travel calls for very little linguistic 
effort. One has but to put a childlike trust in 
porters, railway officials, and hotel servants, whose 
intelligence is equal to most occasions. If, how- 
ever, a hitch occurs, then the trouble commences. 
A man who loses his luggage, or takes the wrong 
train, or falls into a like predicament and cannot 
explain himself out of it, will quickly become a mere 
source of amusement, or even a ridiculous object. 
A lady, travelling alone and in similar case, will 
of course have as much compassionate attention 
and generous service as she cares to requisition. 

Luckily I had no hitches, so here I am, deposited 
at Askabad by the long leisurely train that is 
taking Russian mails, Russian officers and soldiers, 
Russian tradesmen, and a nondescript motley of 
yellow-skinned people with narrow glistening eyes 
and high cheek-bones, eastward to Bukhara and 
Samarkand, those towns of a wondrous past. 

I should like to go with them, but the mountains 
of the south are there in wait for me. To-night, 
as I sit in a moonlit garden of palms, acacias, and 



4 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

willows, discussing the latest Paris news with a 
little old spectacled Frenchwoman, the pleasure 
of the hour is made piquant with regrets and 
speculations. To-morrow, before the sun sets, 
I shall be in Persia again. 

When you asked me whether I was really glad 
to go back, I shrugged my shoulders or made 
some equally neutral reply. A man must make a 
living, and that, after all, is the main argument. 
The rest is a matter of pros and cons, and when 
you have summed them up the account pretty 
well balances. The home life pulls hard, especi- 
ally at times of leave-taking. So much of tradi- 
tion and environment have to be given up ; so 
much of the sensible pleasures and perceptions 
that have made up your early life seems to be lost 
when you go among a race that has none of those 
things you take delight in. One cannot go to the 
opera in Persia, or hear a Beethoven symphony, 
or visit the Academy, or dance at a country ball, 
or take a punt on the river, or discuss the burning 
questions of the day over a snug fireside. Of what 
use, in the Middle East, is a liking for French 
poets or English county history ? Of what ser- 
vice is the study of socialism, let us say ? Side 
interests of this kind do not constitute a man's 
character ? Well, perhaps not, but they are a big 
part of his personalty, to use a lawyer's word, 
and except in so far as they recur pleasantly in 
memory these things are so much loss to the life 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 5 

of one who has suddenly to drop them and take 
up other concerns. On the other hand, you may 
say that such things go to the building-up of a 
creed, and give a point of attack, as it were, for 
new life. There is not much in that, but you can 
have it for what it is worth, and we will turn 
to the sad case of the man on leave after five 
years in a country like this. He, poor fellow, is 
pulled both ways. He goes home to his friends, 
who, in spite of correspondence, have known 
nothing of him during that great slice of time. He 
takes up the old life, plays golf and goes to the 
theatre, and talks about politics and the stock 
exchange in a pathetic attempt to make up the 
interval and come in touch. But all the while 
his mind is working on lines his friends cannot 
follow. He feels that these people, with whom 
he once saw eye to eye, are looking down avenues 
of thought that no longer exist for him. He 
thinks, probably, that their intelligence is dissi- 
pated in the details of town life and daily news- 
papers. His conversation with them must be 
either anecdotal or general — forms which lead 
quickly to exhaustion and boredom, but seldom 
to intimacy. After a few months his international 
outlook begins to take local colour again, when, 
heigh-ho ! he must go back to the East. Of what 
use ' reviving old desires,' to be thus torn from their 
attainment ? He sighs and turns his mind for 
consolation to thoughts of guns and tennis rackets 



6 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

and of the comforting attentions of many native 
servants. The Stores and his tailor provide him 
with an outfit and suppHes, and away he goes. 
His mental outfit is a patchy one, partly discarded 
and partly renewed, but not to be completed 
anywhere in Europe. 

I fancy I see you, as you read this, throwing 
your head back, raising your eyebrows, smiling a 
tolerant smile with your eyes and a determined 
one with your lips, and asking again : ' Are you 
glad to go ? ' Why yes, of course I am. But I 
should like to have you with me. 

RoBAT I TuRUKH, Ist September 1913. 

Dear M., — I had a letter from R. yesterday, 
telling me that you were going north for a holiday 
on the moors, so I expect you to share my mood 
this evening — a joyous one, for I am at last on 
the road with my caravan, having left Meshed 
just a few hours ago. But first let me tell you 
how I got there. 

The morning after I wrote you I left Askabad 
with my hand-luggage in an old phaeton with 
no tyres, drawn by three scraggy ponies. I had 
no servant, and the driver was a Russian who 
knew about ten words of Persian, so we hadn't 
much to say to each other, and I let him go as 
he liked. We rolled along a flat road for a 
couple of hours through a stream of dust set up 
by the horses' feet, and then rattled uphill to 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 7 

the first wayside stopping-place, where we halted 
for an hour and a half to have lunch and feed the 
team. For the rest of the afternoon we continued 
up and through the mountains till the frontier 
was reached an hour before sunset. My passport 
was taken and returned for the sixth and last 
time in Russian territory, and we passed on up 
to the Russian frontier post and down to the 
Persian village of Bajgiran, where I put up for 
the night in a room in a caravanserai kept by a 
Russian. Next morning we were off at six 
o'clock, and so we rumbled south-eastwards for 
four days, through a continuous flow of white 
grimy dust, till we passed through one of the gates 
of Meshed, and rattled and jogged and jingled 
our way over rough-paved narrow streets, coming 
to rest finally near the town square, where I 
found a cheery welcome in a roomy bungalow 
with a shady garden. 

Tea in a deck-chair under the trees on the lawn 
was very pleasant after an hour spent in removing 
road-dust. Later on some tennis players turned 
up, and I was introduced to a few members of 
the European colony. Five days later I received 
my luggage from Askabad, and commenced 
preparations for continuing my journey. Un- 
fortunately we are in the month of Ramazan, 
when good Mohammedans sleep and pray most 
of the day, eat and drink at night only, and do 
as little work as possible, so that I was detained 



8 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

another week before starting. The Russians 
have an infantry garrison at present in Meshed, 
and they run a mihtary club where every one 
goes once a week to dance and make merry to 
the music of the regimental band. The officers 
themselves are the most hospitable fellows im- 
aginable, and their conviviality knows no bounds 
in extent or duration. When they have danced 
their wonderful dances for an hour or so, they 
sit down to supper, and dishes are passed and 
glasses are emptied and songs are sung till it is 
time to return to the dancing. Later, when the 
ladies have gone home and the band has played 
itself out, they continue their jovial capers till 
it is time for morning drill. In the afternoon 
you will see them playing indifferent tennis 
with the same inexhaustible zest. One wonders 
when they sleep and whether they ever feel tired. 
I entered Meshed somewhat in the travelling 
fashion of seventeenth- century England. To- 
night I am back in the Middle Ages. Not en- 
tirely so, for my little camp has in it many touches 
of modern Europe, instance the folding bed, 
table and chair fresh from London, which half- 
fill my Indian tent bought in the bazaars of 
Meshed. The candle-lamps are lit, and the 
servants are busy with cooking- pots round a 
wood fire. My horse, a few yards away, is 
crunching his barley with an appetite born of 
anticipation. Farther off, the mules are feeding 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 9 

quietly, with every now and then a little reverber- 
ant note from the bells at their necks as the animals 
bury their muzzles deeper into their nosebags. A 
light breeze rustles in the willows by the water- 
course. The heavens are luminous with stars. 

Meshed, with its pilgrim population of dead 
and living, is lost in darkness across the plain, 
and remains but a vanishing memory. Lost, 
too, is its golden dome, that glittering crown of 
Persia's most holy shrine, whereto the pilgrims 
journey — many of them old and frail men, 
hastening, perhaps, to end their days like moths 
beneath its ball of fire. 

You will be tramping the heather these days, 
breathing the air of the hills, and asking yourself 
why you ever live in towns. I too have found 
my hills again. They are not clothed with 
heather, but bare, for the most part, to the all- 
devouring sun. The plains, waterless but for 
a few happy valleys, have nothing to embellish 
them but a patchy growth of scrubby little 
desert plants, on some of which the camel 
browses. Here are no morning mists, no dewy 
twilights. The air is clear, translucent. The 
world is in outline. Everything is naked, simple, 
inevitable. Over all sits solitude among the 
hilltops, like a spirit brooding on eternity. . . . 

After all, I envy you your moors. But then, 
perhaps, sometimes, you envy me my wilderness, 
do you not ? 



10 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

AmranI, 8th September 1913. 

Dear M., — I arrived here at six this morning, 
having been in the saddle since sunset last night. 
Food was almost unobtainable, thanks to the 
ravages of a band of Persian cavalry who had 
preceded us, so I had to breakfast on tea (without 
milk) and the remains of a large cake provided 
by my kind hostess in Meshed. Later on, by 
means of prayers, expostulations, anticipatory 
blessings, and payment in advance, we procured 
a meagre supply of bread, melons and fowls, 
and fodder for the animals. The deficiencies of 
the commissariat are aggravated by the fact 
that the plains are full of big black-breasted 
sand-grouse — nice fat birds that would make a 
delectable lunch if only there was a gun in the 
camp. 

I have come so far gently and by easy stages, 
through the village of Sharifabad, by Robat i 
Saf id, to the pleasant little town of Turbat, which 
lies buried in orchards between two fertile plains ; 
on to Zurnukh and Mehneh — both of them crown 
lands. From the latter place to here is about 
thirty miles over a broad plain, with not a single 
habitation on the road beyond a few miserable 
houses half-way. 

As we filed off southwards last night in little 
groups and units, I thought of past journeys in 
Persia — long weary marches in the Bakhtiari 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 11 

mountains, with the partridge calhng at sunrise- 
riverside camps in the heat of early autumn— the 
night ascent of the great passes from Kazeran to 
Dasht i Arjen on the Bushire road— Persepohs 
in the dusk of evening, with the great carven 
bulls guarding the porch of Xerxes. . . . 

We moved out slowly, with the long cool night 
before us. Westward across the great plain 
the sky was magical with sunset tints along the 
unbroken horizon— a long yellow flush on the 
level of the pale sun— above him rose-pink, and 
over that a little grey bank of feathery cloud. 
In the south the crystal half-moon was floating 
like an iceberg in a sea of turquoise blue. East- 
ward the blue turned to lapis lazuli, sinking 
deeper and deeper till it merged into shadowed 
tones of murky violet and purple along the 
darkening horizon. 

The mules crept on with little deliberate steps, 
their noses to the track. Behind them the 
muleteers followed with long swinging strides. 
In the rear came my four mounted guards, with 
their old Werndl rifles balanced across their 
saddles. Anon the Milky Way appeared over- 
head, and the Great Bear came rising over the 
northern hills. The moon, lost for the moment 
in cloudy billows, left us in semi-darkness, out 
of which glowed little red spots of fire in the 
pipes of the muleteers. 

Suddenly the leader of the horsemen at my 



12 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

back burst into song, shouting in high-pitched 
long-drawn notes — a song of languorous amour, 
full of the ripples and gurgles and trills that 
characterise these people's music. When he 
stopped I bade him continue — ^and moved a 
little farther ahead of him. He had a good 
voice, but its edges, to the ears of a European, 
needed the softening of distance. 

Midnight passed, and the men became less 
talkative. Heads nodded over saddles, and doz- 
ing figures sank into amorphous bundles on the 
packs of the ridden mules. The muleteers took 
turns on their one little donkey, stretching them- 
selves face downwards across the sacks of fodder 
on his all-suffering back. The rnoon had long 
disappeared, and the track was barely visible. 
The hours drew on between waking and dreaming 
and watching the stars. Orion, limb by limb, 
had dragged himself clear of the horizon, and 
was now well on his way westward. By and by 
the morning star appeared, bringing with it the 
false dawn. The air grew chilly, and I dis- 
mounted and led my horse awhile. Gradually 
the east paled. Pale turned to white, and white 
became yellow. The stars disappeared, and the 
brown hills stood out clear. A great flight of 
crows passed high overhead. The horses, sight- 
ing the village of our destination, quickened their 
steps. At last, all awake and lively again, we 
jogged into AmrSni as the sun was rising. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS IS 

Kain, 11th September 191S. 

Dear M., — I left Amrani at four on the morning 
of the ninth, going southwards across the plain 
into hills and among sand-dunes that gave way 
eventually to the broad plains of Gunabad, which 
I found to be plentifully blest with large villages 
and fruit gardens. At eight-thirty we reached 
Beidukht, finding quarters for the day in the 
house of a peasant whose wife and family promptly 
vacated the two living-rooms to make place for 
me. In one of these rooms the roof, for a yard or 
more from the outer wall and across the whole 
breadth of the room, was replaced by a wind- 
funnel arrangement of brick and plaster roughly 
partitioned into three great vents for the passage 
of air-currents. The householder, who paid about 
four shillings a month rent for his four rooms and 
kitchen and go-downs, was a solicitous fellow, and 
took me on to his roof to illustrate the great 
labour required for the conservation of water in 
the surrounding orchards and cotton and melon 
fields. The gardens were all deeply sunk, and 
the fields banked round with earth to retain the 
scanty rain-water. Well-water, he told me, was 
only obtainable at a depth of six hundred feet. 
Later, I was shown an underground reservoir, the 
water of which had recently been spoiled by the 
action of an Indian and several Russian Cossacks 
on their way southwards. These travellers, it 



14 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

was said, had gone there to wash themselves, and 
had apparently made a free use of soap in the 
tank itself. 

At Beidukht I had to change guards, and a 
messenger was accordingly sent to the deputy- 
governor at an adjacent village. Subsequently 
I sent a second messenger to hasten matters, and 
four men turned up late at night. As only three 
of them were provided with rifles, I told the 
fourth I had no use for a mounted man who was 
unarmed, and sent him away. In a few moments 
he returned flourishing an old revolver. He was 
quite disconsolate and not a little perplexed when 
I told him that a rifle of some sort was obligatory. 
Eventually I left with the other three at midnight 
by a low moon, and reached Khidri at half-past 
eight next morning. The road was a fairly good 
one, climbing and winding for the last seven miles 
through a broad range of hills, from which we 
descended gently to the plain 

At Khidri I occupied a small house with one 
living room, open kitchen-space, and a compound 
about twelve feet square. In the evening, as I 
stood on the low mud roof watching the home- 
returning of goat-herds with their scanty flocks, 
a dervish came to my door in the street below, 
chanting raucously and with much loud profes- 
sional groaning. His litany commenced in praise 
of the deity, and shortly became very topical 
and pointed in indirect address to myself as the 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 15 

object of his attentions. The matter of his chant 
was that a certain sahib, whose name he men- 
tioned and whom I was shortly to meet in Bir- 
jand, was a very generous sahib, possessed of many 
virtues, and, in short, that this munificent sahib 
gave him two krans (eight pence) every year. I 
was so struck with this unexpected testimonial to 
my future friend's widespread reputation that I 
promptly bestowed half that sum on the wily 
beggar- dervish. He went off chanting louder than 
ever, and the burden of his sing-song strain, 
announced tunefully to the whole village, was 

this : ' There are two sahibs in the world : 

sahib and this sahib ! These are the greatest of 
the Feranghis ! ' 

An hour or two after sunset we got clear of 
Khidri. The mules were going slowly, with a 
fairly long stage before them, so I left them to 
their leisurely paces and pushed on with one guard 
and my servants. Our escort proved to be the 
poorest of guides, and as a consequence we lost 
the road twice in the course of the night. For 
two-thirds of the way we kept to the plain, then 
entered the hills, and by and by threaded our way 
out again by a winding river-course. The rising 
sun showed the town of Kain, the old capital of 
the district, lying under the southern hills across 
the plain. We had travelled nearly forty miles in 
the night, and I was glad to find comfortable 
quarters in the telegraph office. 



16 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

This afternoon I had a visit from a Persian who 
holds an appointment in the town. He was a 
gentleman of the new school, and represented 
one of its least attractive types. After airing 
with ill-concealed vanity his meagre knowledge 
of French and English, he drifted into political 
platitudes, and for half an hour regaled me with 
second-hand ideas, culled, obviously, from the 
Teheran newspapers of the last five years. The 
purport of his oracular eloquence was twofold. 
' We Persians are a poor people, unworthy of 
civilisation, and fit only for subjection.' And, on 
the other hand, ' England and Russia are here 
entirely for their own benefit ; they will not let 
other races help us, and their trade interests are 
a mere pretext created as an excuse for political 
encroachment.' Persia's young men are very 
prone, nowadays, to lamenting their failings as a 
race. National self-abasement is the burden of 
their talk, and much fluent diction is wasted in 
destructive criticism of their leaders' methods, 
which criticism, of course, they never think of 
applying to themselves as individuals. 

Kain is not a prosperous town, and I begin to 
wonder if the rest of the district is like it. My 
servants have a low opinion of the place, having 
found that mutton, fowls, and rice, for some 
temporary reason, were hard to procure. Their 
view of things is, a precise one, and its practical 
justice oppresses me. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 17 

QiBK, ISth September 1918. 
Dear M., — ^Yesterday's journey was a pleasant 
one, and not too arduous. We left Kain at three 
in the morning, passing through a long stretch of 
gardens and along the plain till we reached the 
hills. A gentle winding ascent brought us to the 
chilly top of the pass at eight o'clock, and we 
then descended with a quickly rising temperature 
till our march ended in Ram, a squalid little 
village among the hills. On the road we passed 
half a dozen hamlets making the best of their 
scanty water supply with tiny fields of barley. 
Melons were plentiful along the hill-sides, and my 
muleteers helped themselves freely to the ripe 
fruit, which would not in any case fetch more than 
a penny each on the spot. Among the melons 
were a few castor- oil plants; the uncultivated 
slopes, dotted with boulders of dark rock, were 
relieved with a fair growth of camel-thorn. The 
villagers of Ram subsist on the produce of their 
meagre crops, and weave their clothing from the 
fleeces of their ill-fed flocks. Their houses are of 
mud and straw, with sunk floors and low door- 
ways. They refused silver or nickel money from 
us, declaring that they possessed neither, and that 
copper only was current with them, the coins being 
less than a farthing in value. Presumably they 
preferred small change and thought it impolitic 
to display their wealth. They spoke highly of 



18 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

the governor of the district, stating as ample 
reason for their loyalty that they had paid no 
taxes for two years. 

I camped for the day on a walled-in piece of 
ground, and at two hours after midnight set out 
again through the hills, going along in switchback 
fashion with short ascents and long descents, till 
we finally drew clear of the mountains and de- 
scended to Sihdeh, a populous village of mud 
houses with domed roofs, lying in a billowy plain. 
Anon we climbed a gentle slope through fields of 
melons, beet, and late barley, and continued up 
and down through apparently interminable hills 
to Qibk. Here we are at another miserable 
village. My camp is pitched beneath it, and 
sheltered from the afternoon sun by mulberry 
and almond trees. 

I have not explored this place with the un- 
pronounceable name. Rather I have kept sulkily 
to my tent, outside which, at this moment, a 
woman is dangling an infant in a powerful appeal 
for alms. 

My mood is not charitable. It is rather 
apprehensive. I am wondering what Birjand 
will be like when I see it to-morrow. 

Birjand, 11^^ November 1918. 
Dear M., — When I wrote you last I was on the 
eve of my arrival here, two months ago. I shall 
never forget my impression as I rode into the 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 19 

Birjand valley next morning and caught sight of 
a part of the town, looking exactly like another 
dingy stopping-place on a caravan road. My 
distaste was heightened by a nearer view of barren 
hills, below which, on a long hump sticking out of 
the valley, was dumped a pell-mell heap of little 
mud and plaster houses with domed roofs and 
mean walls. My feelings were partly relieved 
when I found a friendly reception and comfortable 
quarters awaiting me, and my first disappoint- 
ment gradually gave way to something else. 

You will think I have waited an unconscion- 
able time before telling you anything about the 
place I have come to live in. But I have had little 
time to write until now, and I thought it better 
not to use bad language in a hurry. 

The English people I found here have now all 
gone south, and I am practically alone for the 
time being. I have looked around a little, and 
made acquaintance with many of the local people, 
and I find that Birjand isn't such a terrible place 
as it seemed in the first week or two. In fact, I 
feel like a man who has found a dust-covered 
bottle of rare old wine hidden in what he thought 
was an empty cellar. 

I had inklings of such a possibility even in 
Meshed. The governor, it was said there, was a 
man in his early prime, who played tennis and 
auction bridge, and was a good shot — a man who 
represented an old ruling family, and was beloved 



20 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

by his people. Truly an exceptional combina- 
tion of virtues and accomplishments, which in 
itself promised wonders for an out-of-the-way 
district of Persia. That the climate was excellent 
went without saying, but that the people were 
prosperous and had an extensive and thriving 
industry of their own seemed too good to be 
believed. I had many misgivings, but my doubts 
have nearly all been removed. 

The governor is away just now on business at 
Teheran. His deputy is a cheery, open-eyed 
fellow, with a hearty laugh and a good-natured 
desire to please everybody, to which end he works 
hard from early morning till night. What does 
he do ? He owns a lot of carpet factories, but 
besides that he administers a district with several 
hundred thousand people in it. How does he do 
it ? Well, he goes about seeing people sometimes, 
but generally he sits in his office at one end of a 
big garden, and talks to priests and merchants, 
and landowners and officials, and village headmen 
and tribal leaders. Some of them have important 
grievances, others none at all, but they almost all 
want something from him, and they often get 
what they want. His office is a general court- 
house, too. The man whose neighbour has 
damaged his wall or stolen his wife, the traveller 
who has been robbed or says he has, the late 
pedestrian arrested for being out in the streets 
after closing time without the password, the two 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 21 

strangers who have quarrelled, the two friends 
who have fought, the baker suing for debt, the 
petty farmer claiming water rights, the man who 
has been called bad names in public, the man who 
has resisted the ' police,' and the ' policeman ' 
who has overstepped his authority — all these 
come along and swear and forswear and counter- 
swear, each of them with a crowd of witnesses, 
real or imaginary, and all of them, by their own 
eloquent showing, harmless, innocent, and hapless 
ones who have been vilely wronged and seek the 
protection of a benign government against the 
most evil of men. Out of contradiction comes 
truth — not always, but surprisingly often. Occa- 
sionally a severe beating takes place in the high- 
walled garden in front of the court-house, and as 
my own quarters are just on the other side of the 
wall, I hear the howls of the victim of justice while 
I am having my poached eggs of a morning. My 
boy cocks his head to catch the groans, and grins 
appreciatively. If I ask him what the culprit is 
being bastinadoed for, he is sure to know all about 
it. I went on my roof the other day (somewhat 
shamefacedly) to watch the operation, as I had 
never seen a beating before. The wretch lay on 
his back with his feet tied to a cross-pole, and two 
men were laying on to his upturned soles in de- 
liberate fashion with stout loose whips. When it 
was over he was carried to a stable and left there 
with his swollen feet in the litter. Sometimes 



22 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

jagged branches of pomegranate are used, and 
blood flows quickly. Even death may result if 
the flogging is exceptionally severe. Horrible, 
you say ; and what a barbarous country, you 
think. But is there as much barbarity in that 
as there was in Europe less than a hundred years 
ago? 

There is a prison in Birjand, but the only 
occupant at present is a man committed for 
murder and awaiting sentence. The murder was 
cold-blooded, and the man has confessed his 
crime before three priests in turn, but if the son of 
the victim accepts blood-money he will be let off 
at that. The man's story is that he and his friend, 
fellow-travellers, were resting for the night in a 
room at a certain village. Suddenly the devil 
tempted him to kill his friend, who had about 
thirty shillings on his person. He could not of 
course resist the devil, so he took a large stone and 
beat the brains out of the sleeping man. When 
out riding I have often passed little cairns of stone 
by the wayside, and I am told that some of them 
mark the scene of former murders. What, I 
wonder, are the feelings of the murderer's relatives 
when they pass that little cairn ? Do they add a 
stone to the pile, from pride or shame, or do they 
take one away, from fear ? Probably they have 
no feelings at all. 

The governor being a bridge player, there are 
naturally three other players here, so I make a 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 28 

fourth, and we meet twice a week. The stakes 
are nominal, and the players are average hands. 
Their terminology is an amusing mixture of 
English, French, and Persian, picked up from 
Europeans or invented by themselves. We play 
from an hour after sunset till eight o'clock or 
later, when they know my dinner- hour is due. 
They themselves have their squatting meal at 
any time between nine and midnight, and retire 
to bed very shortly after it, to rise again with the 
sun. The talk, in the intervals of play, is viva- 
cious and jocular, even when business or politics 
are mentioned. Perhaps the Persian newspaper 
from Calcutta is brought in, and questions are 
asked as to some point of our administration in 
Egypt, or the position of affairs in the Balkans 
is discussed with the quick intelligence, lively 
imagination, and impetuous reasoning for which 
the Persian is noted. 

BiRJAND, 17th November 1913. 

Dear M., — I am making my new quarters com- 
fortable by degrees, and have just ordered a carpet 
from the best factory in the district, which hap- 
pens to adjoin my house. I inspected the factory 
a fortnight ago, and, after looking over the score 
of hand-looms, chose a ' creation ' that was near 
completion. Later it appeared that the carpet 
of my choice was already sold, so I have com- 
missioned the master-weaver to make me one of 



24 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

a certain design which he showed me. It will 
measure about fourteen square yards, will take 
three months to make, and will cost about £25. 
It will be of wool with a cotton warp, will have 
about ninety loops or knots to the square inch, 
will include about sixteen colours of fast dye, and 
will last for twenty years with ordinary wear. 

A Persian doesn't mind spending money on his 
carpets, for he sits on them, prays on them, and 
spreads his dinner-cloth on them, so that when 
his floors are well-covered his rooms are almost 
furnished. Hence the excellence of the craft. 
The Persian carpet is the finest in the world in 
point of workmanship, durability, and delicacy 
of design and colouring. Those made in this dis- 
trict average a fair quality and have, of course, 
a characteristic style of their own. They are 
nearly all brought to Birjand and then sent up 
to Meshed for sale and export. Directly or in- 
directly the industry supports most of the local 
population. 

I have been reading a few old annual Consular 
Reports on the trade of the district. Possibly 
you have never heard of such things, but if so, 
you needn't let their existence disturb you. They 
are very dry documents, interesting only to the 
British Government and to business men and 
people who compile encyclopaedias. In case you 
are still curious as to what they are like, I have 
paraphrased one for you in the roomy manner of 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 25 

the ancients, leaving out the figures and statistical 
tables (which are beyond paraphrase), and adding 
a few facts which don't concern the government 
or their consuls. The facts are as true as I can 
make them, but by way of relief you will find some 
local colour in the phraseology. Here follows. 

In the eastern part of Persia is a province which 
is called the Qayinat, and the chief town of this 
province is Birjand. From Birjand if a man 
journey northwards he will reach the frontier of 
this province in three or four days, and if he 
travel towards the rising sun he will come in six 
days to the country of Afghanistan ; likewise if 
he go by the south road he will arrive in six days 
within the bounds of Seistan, while if he follow 
the setting sun he will pass by the edge of the 
great desert of the south-west — a land which owns 
but little lordship. 

Now, whereas the people of this province are 
not above two hundred thousand in number, 
there are in the chief town, which is Birjand, full 
fifteen thousand souls as men reckon. Some 
count themselves as having Arabs for their fore- 
fathers, and for the rest they are a goodly race, 
having neither the poor spirit of plain-dwellers 
nor the rude disposition of hillmen. In all the 
province around Birjand are places of small re- 
pute : in the valleys and plains are villages, and 
the largest of these have but five thousand souls : 
in the hills and on the mountain sides are many 



26 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

hamlets, where water is hard to find in summer, 
and life is a difficult thing in winter by reason of 
the cold and the snow that falls. The people of 
the plains are tillers of the soil and keepers of 
flocks, and their women busy themselves with the 
making of cloth wherewith the people clothe 
themselves. Likewise they are famous weavers 
of carpets, both the village people and the outer 
tribes. They make their houses of earth and 
plaster, with walls of exceeding thickness, and the 
roof of each room is curved like to the top of an 
egg, for the land is a dry land and there is little 
tim^ber in it save the poplar tree, and of that they 
make their doors and windows and pillars, and 
beams for those houses that have the flat roof. 
Of fruit trees in their gardens there is the almond 
tree and the walnut tree, and the quince and the 
pomegranate, and also the mulberry trees, both 
that of which the silkworm eats and the other. 
And in their gardens and fields they grow cotton 
both white and brown, and wheat and barley and 
melons and opium ; and the poor people grow 
turnips, whereof they make their food in winter 
time. Of the wheat they make their brown un- 
leavened bread, and within these ten years have 
they grown much of the potato, which is a service- 
able bulb that a man may use with meat if haply 
he sicken of rice. Also, they grow much fine 
saffron, wherewith they dress their rice and their 
sweetmeats. And in their hills and valleys is 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 27 

much rare growth whereof the seeds and gums 
yield matter for trade. For their meat they eat 
of the flesh of sheep and goats, and they plough 
their fields with oxen. Of mines they have slight 
art, lacking the means thereto of western races, 
but some hold that there is certain wealth of 
copper and iron and such like in their mountains. 
Their salt they take from the rock and from the 
desert. For their fires they burn the wood of the 
tamarisk and the jujube and other trees, having 
no coal. They have no railways, nor have they 
knowledge of steam power. Of carriages their 
wealthy men possess but three or four among 
them, and for the rest they ride from place to 
place on horses or mules or asses. 

For their industry, we have spoken of it ; for 
their enterprise, it is put forth in trade ; for their 
pleasure, it is in the possession of lands, whereto 
they dispose the profits of their labour. But as 
to the trading of the townspeople, the highways 
can tell of it, for there the beasts of burden pass 
with their loads. From the north come camels 
and mules in plenty to Birjand, bringing oil and 
sugar from Russia, bringing rice from Sabzevar, 
and from Khurasan the silk that goes down to 
India. Also their eating and drinking vessels and 
their lamps they bring from Russia, and cloth of 
wool and cotton. And when the camels and 
mules have been eased of their burden and have 
taken rest, they return to Khurasan with rich 



28 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

bales of carpets and much wool and cotton and 
saffron, and the merchandise of India, and the 
hair of goats and the skins of foxes. 

But from the south the camels come slowly out 
of far-off Hindustan, journeying for many moons. 
And they bring much of the wealth of India and 
of Europe, even much fine cloth of wool and of 
cotton, and yarn for the making of carpets, and 
dyes for the colouring of their wool, and copper 
for the making of pots. Tea also they bring from 
India, and likewise coffee and sweet - smelling 
spices ; also a thousand things whereof a man has 
need in these times, and of which the foreigners 
alone have the art. And they journey by way of 
Seistan, which is a country of winds and dust and 
great heat. And from the reed pastures of Seistan 
they bring fair tale of good cattle and sheep, and 
from their plains they bring sacks of wheat for 
the bread of the people. And anon the camels 
return by countless marches to India, bearing 
precious bales of silk, and also gums and almonds 
and other fruits of hill and plain. 

Now of the government of this people we would 
speak, and of their manner of life. And, firstly, 
of their faith, for that they are all good Moham- 
medans of one sect or another, having among 
their number neither Jew nor Armenian, nor yet 
Parsee ; and their priests are men of piety and 
wise circumspection, not such as incite the 
common people to fractiousness and dissension. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 29 

Of their governor they have just pride, for he is 
descended from many generations of rulers of 
men, and his justice and benevolence are matters 
of praise and thanksgiving; and he excels in 
manly sports as is becoming to princes. Of 
tribute they pay to the Treasury in Teheran 
yearly according to their land, but the hire of their 
men-at-arms is paid by the Treasury. Notwith- 
standing, they are slow of payment and have no 
liking for the collectors of revenue. Of their 
manners and ways, they are as those of other 
Persians, yet less changed from the traditions of 
their fathers, for they live still much apart from 
the outer world ; and they speak on occasions 
amongst themselves in a barbarous dialect, and 
have strange customs. For their virtues, they 
exceed indeed their vices, but of corruption and 
evil they have such as all men have, being, before 
all, great smokers of burnt opium, so that if the 
truth be told they are in great number enslaved 
by it, even to the destruction of their bodies and 
souls. For the rest they breathe a pure air which 
breeds but little disease. 

Truly they are a pleasant, peace-loving, and 
docile people, thrifty in their households and as 
honest in their dealings as a man may well expect. 

B1RJAND5 24!th November 1918. 

Dear M., — So you are back in town, and you 
are sorry for me for being out of civilisation. 



80 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Well, you know how London attracts me when I 
have escaped from it, fogs and wet streets and 
chilly Sundays and all. It is an attraction made 
up of many things. In many ways it is really an 
irrational allurement — a fine stimulant to the 
imagination and energy, if you like, but you know 
the danger of stimulants. 

When a Persian thinks of England he thinks of 
London, and when he thinks of London he thinks 
of its bigness, its wonderful railways and motors, 
its free institutions, its hotels, its theatres and 
other places of entertainment, its thousand and 
one opportunities of public amusement, distrac- 
tion, and dissipation. And he sighs for his own 
country, so poor in these respects. But why 
should he sigh ? There are no cities in Persia, 
and likewise there are no slums ; no steam-driven 
industries, and therefore none of the mechanical 
tyranny that deadens the brain, starves the 
heart, and wearies body and mind with its mon- 
otony : there are no railways and no factory 
chimneys, but there is fresh air for every one who 
wants it, though occasionally you do step across a 
dead dog in the street. There is no gas and no 
electricity, but is not the glow of oil-lamps 
pleasanter ? There is less publicity and less co- 
operation, and therefore a freer individualism in 
some ways. I could go on like that, but my 
conscience cries halt. The Persian newspapers 
have been telling their readers for years that what 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 81 

they lack is public spirit — ^the spirit of co-opera- 
tion. Well-meaning foreigners have asked them 
why they do not organise trade guilds and mer- 
chant guilds as Europeans did in their Middle 
Ages. They reply that they are too fond of 
intrigue, that they suspect each other too much, 
that their standard of business morality is too 
uncertain, that their ideas are too volatile. The 
Persian likes advice, but has always a fairly sane 
reason for not accepting it. 

I have given you the educated provincial's con- 
crete idea of England, of Europe. His abstract 
conception is of course a nobler one. He thinks 
of us as people who are wisely and honestly 
governed, who are secure in their possessions, 
rational in their habits, broad-minded in their 
views, and reliable in their actions. Above all, he 
thinks of us as those to whom science and know- 
ledge have brought a larger, fuller life. He sees 
the complex and innumerable products of our 
civilisation, and he envies us not only for the 
comforts they bring, but for the intellectual 
command of these things. Arguing somewhat 
from his own case, he imagines us as having and 
delighting in a just knowledge and comprehension 
of the history, constitution, and bearing relation of 
all the material paraphernalia of our lives. Just 
think for a moment what that means. 

To return to my comparisons. What impresses 
me daily here by contrast is the ignorance of us 



82 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

European town- dwellers in matters of daily 
practice. The Persian has little art and less 
science ; his technical knowledge is traditional, 
and is concerned with simple crafts and forms of 
labour. His work is done in open booths in the 
streets, or in the fields around his town or village ; 
his merchandise is borne on the open highways. 
So if a boy would learn the weaving of cloth, he 
has but to watch the weaver or take his place at 
the loom ; cotton-ginning, wool-spinning, and the 
dyeing of yarns are familiar sights to him. If he 
would become a hatter, behold ! there sits the 
maker of hats at his work, and you may stand in 
front of his shop and watch him till you are tired. 
When your servant goes to the baker for bread, or 
to the confectioner for sweetmeats, he sees how 
everything is made and what it is made of. He 
knows where the wheat comes from and how it is 
milled ; where the sugar comes from, and the tea ; 
where the nuts and fruits are grown, and when the 
potatoes he buys were dug. Also, if he is a wide- 
awake fellow, he knows the price of land in the 
neighbourhood, and the crop seasons and methods 
of agriculture, and he knows the big merchants 
and what they deal in and how they do it. He 
can tell you how your house was built — how the 
bricks were made and the plaster prepared, what 
sort of timber was used and where it was grown — 
what were the labourers' wages, how many hours 
a day they worked, and what they had for dinner. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 83 

He has some knowledge of the customary law and 
the ordinary forms and procedure of administra- 
tion, taxation, and justice. He knows nothing, 
of course, of the making of foreign products, but 
he is a fair judge of the finished article. Of every- 
thing that is done in his own town he has an 
inkling. But who of us can say the same ? Our 
commerce is so multifarious that only those 
engaged in it know anything about it ; our arts 
and industries are founded on such an array of 
sciences that only those who have made them a 
special study can understand the processes in- 
volved. We organise exhibitions to teach the 
people how things are made, and we stock 
museums with everything under the sim ; but the 
people resort to exhibitions for other reasons, and 
none of us ever admits having visited a museum. 
Is it not so ? Are we not stupendously and 
boastfully ignorant ? 

We discussed all this, you remember, in the 
middle of an afternoon's golf four months ago, 
and continued the argument over a cup of tea in 
the club-house. You said that in the country 
people know niore about these things, that they 
have more leisure and use their eyes and ears 
better and keep their memories fresher. But how 
many country residents have an intelligent under- 
standing of their neighbours' occupations ? The 
division of labour has put us all into cells, and the 
wall between our cell and the next one has no 



34 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

windows. ' Ah, but,' you say, ' we climb a tower 
occasionally and look around us.' And what do 
we see ? Nothing but roof-tops. So much for 
general observation and musing on things at 
large. 

But I expect that, having read so far, you are 
very cross with me. So I will leave it at that, for 
you know you look charming when you are cross. 

BiRJAND, 1st December 1913. 

Dear M., — ^You ask me what the women in 
Persia are like. But have I not told you that I 
know nothing about them ? I have not ex- 
changed ten words with a native of your sex in 
this country, except in one case. That was in 
Teheran, and the lady in question was wrinkled, 
stout and short of breath, and had a voice like 
the rattle of cart-wheels over a cobbled road. 
She was my washerwoman, and the gossip of 
the quarter. A kindly old soul indeed, but 
much given to scandal-mongering, like many 
another. 

But the women of Persia ! You have seen 
photographs of them : soft and flabby beings, 
with pallid complexions, round faces, and large, 
limpid eyes. In their houses they never appear 
when their men-folk have visitors. In the streets 
they go shrouded from head to foot in their ugly 
black-blue or white cotton overalls, and even the 
veriest hag will veil her face with her robe at the 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 35 

approach of a foreigner. The young and pretty 
ones make play with their veils sometimes. They 
know their security, and make bold to challenge 
the foreigner's eyes with their own great laughing 
orbs. 

But please don't imagine that they are all dolls, 
made for love and coquetry and idle vanity. I 
have seen (in Shiraz) a turbulent tribe numbering 
scores of thousands controlled during months of 
incessant fighting by the wife of its fugitive chief 
— a capable woman, by all accounts, with a head 
for affairs, and the power and authority to com- 
mand respect. Others are like her in their degree, 
and probably most of them are just as hard- 
working and intelligent as their husbands in their 
own sphere. It is the tribal women who make the 
little woollen rugs that are bought and sold in 
thousands here every year, and it is the women of 
this district who weave the goats' hair cloth for 
the garments of their men. 

Birjand has an unusual number of beggar- 
women, young and old, and every day I am 
assailed by their shrill entreaties. I am told that 
in most cases opium, directly or indirectly, has 
led to their undoing. 

For the rest of womankind, I am now and then 
reminded of their existence. My cook, an active 
and clever young rogue who plays football and 
prepares a savoury equally well, petitioned me a 
fortnight ago for leave to marry. The request 



86 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

was made through my boy one evening as I sat 
at dinner. Cookie had come with me from 
Meshed, and had left a wife there, so I told my 
boy to call him up, and he appeared before me as 
I was having my coffee. ' Ali Akbar,' said I, ' I 
am told that you want to marry.' ' Yes, sahib.' 
' What has happened to the wife you left in 
Meshed ? ' 'I divorced her, sahib, before I came 
away.' * You did not tell me that before ? ' ' The 
divorce was only in case she did not follow me here 
in a month's time.' * You did not send her money 
to enable her to come ? ' ' Her father and mother 
are here, sahib, and they won't let her come. She 
is a bad woman.' ' She had been already divorced 
when you married her ? ' ' Yes, sahib. She is 
an evil character, but I didn't know that when I 
married her.' ' You did not make proper in- 
quiries first ? ' 'I was young and lonely, sahib. 
I have no father or mother.' ' Have you a writing 
for the divorce ? ' ' No, sahib. The priest who 
made the document keeps it himself.' ' Well, you 
made a mistake in that marriage. You are still a 
stranger in Birjand. Are you going to make 
another mistake ? ' ' No, sahib. The father of 
this girl is a respectable man. She is fourteen years 
old and has already been married and divorced.' 
' What ! another divorced girl ? ' ' Yes, sahib. 
Her husband went to Yezd, and her father and 
mother wouldn't let her go with him, so she was 
divorced, and lives quietly in her father's house. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 37 

They are very respectable people, and she has 
twenty pounds' worth of household goods of her 
own.' ' I see you know all about it. But you 
are in a great hurry. You had better be careful 
this time. When do you want to marry ? ' ' To- 
night, sahib.' ' Oho ! to-night, indeed ? ' ' Yes, 
sahib. The priest is waiting in the house.' 'Allah 
is great ! And you come now to ask my per- 
mission ? ' 'If you do not allow it, sahib, I will 
send the priest away.' ' Quite so. Well, your 
guests will be waiting. Go and get married and 
be happy, bless you.' ' May your kindness be 
increased. I have a further petition, sahib.' 
' What is it ? ' 'I beg that you will let me have 
the gramafoon for this evening.' 

The artful wretch, you see, was careful to ask 
my permission to marry — in order that he might 
be able to entertain his wedding party with strange 
foreign music. 

Next evening my boy, with due relish of the 
situation, informed me that the cook's former 
wife had just arrived from Meshed. It looked as 
if trouble was in store, and sure enough the 
divorced one's father came to me on the following 
day with a complaint against my cook, and, of 
course, a different version of the story. I sent the 
aggrieved parent away with a promise to hear 
both sides of the case together. More interviews 
followed, and some days later I learned that the 
parties had made friends and that the first wife — 



38 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

the lady of dubious character — had found another 
husband. Truly, in one respect at least, Birjand 

is not Heaven. 

Birjand, 6/^ December 1913. 

Dear M.,— We are into the first days of Muhar- 
ram, the Shieh month of mourning, and there is 
much beating of breasts in unison (a fine exhila- 
rating exercise in this cold weather) and shouting 
of the names of the prophet's martyred grandsons. 
The shops are half shut, and the people flock to 
the courtyards where religious plays are being 
performed. The trumpet sounds, the costumed 
actors declaim in tragic verse, the white-robed 
women sob in loud and piteous chorus, and the 
passing foreigner even is affected by the apparent 
keenness and fervour of this annual emotional 
outburst. They are easily touched, these people ; 
and in truth the scenes depicted at the culmi- 
nating points of the great drama of martyrdom are 
heart-rending in their crude realism. The actors 
are dressed in the supposed Arab costumes and 
armour of the seventh century ; they have no 
scenery, and, for all music there is little but the 
fateful blare of the trumpet and the beat of drums. 
Even so, perhaps, did the mediaeval Church im- 
press the history of its great passion on followers 
of the Christian faith. Tragedy, of course, is 
relieved by lighter entertainments, and occasion- 
ally the comic element is introduced as it was by 
us in the Middle Ages. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 39 

These plays are the only theatre the Persians 
possess. But their country blossoms with poets 
of another quality, whose mystic and erotic verse 
is read and quoted everywhere. Their odes and 
songs of love and wine and pleasure are recited 
and sung at private entertainments in every large 
town by troupes of professional dancers and 
musicians. Birjand is not a large town, and 
Birjand has no professional musicians, but be- 
tween ourselves it is none the worse for that. 
One of the local bigwigs produced a native zither 
when I called on him the other day, and enter- 
tained me with a few Persian pieces. He didn't 
sing, of course. Singing is not a polite accomplish- 
ment from the Persians' point of view, among 
men at least. 

They are very fond of the gramophone — a. 
depraved taste, you will say. The ordinary folks 
like the records of Persian music, which they 
understand. The enlightened young men of the 
better classes pretend sometimes to an educated 
preference for European songs, but one rather 
doubts their sincerity. 

My own instrument — a borrowed one, by the 
way — is old-fashioned and musty and broken- 
voiced. The records, like the books in a circula- 
ting library, are a fair indication of the average 
man's taste. There is a little of everything, from 
Mozart to musical comedy, from Caruso to coon- 
songs. The Persians like one kind as much as 



40 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

another, which is to say that they listen and enjoy 
in their own fashion without understanding. 
How could they understand, when the very idea 
of harmony, musical or mental, social or political, 
is somewhat new and strange to them ? 

BiRJAND, 11^^ December 1913. 

Dear M., — I have been out on a week-end 
shooting excursion — a dash into the hills and back. 
All little towns get grubby at times, and Birjand 
is no exception, so off we go with a rifle and a 
shikari for a breath of mountain air and a sight of 
fresh wild things. The wild things, of course, 
include goat-herds and woodcutters and charcoal- 
burners, and others of the pagan fraternity. As 
for game, the pretty little gazelle skips around on 
the open plains within reach of a day's ride. The 
fleet wild ass is farther away, and the leopard 
lurks uncertainly in the mountains where the 
giddy ibex tosses his head at the prowler. In the 
hills near the town there is the wild sheep that 
roams in the lower ranges and plays havoc with 
the melon-fields in late autumn. 

Naturally the first thing to do is to get a good 
shikari. I have bagged quite a good one — ^a 
sturdy little slouching fellow of twenty-three or 
so, with rosy cheeks and a perpetual smile. His 
name is Sultan, and he is one of the Ismaili sect 
whose religious head is the Agha Khan of India, 
and whose local headquarters are at the village of 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 41 

Sihdeh. I sent Sultan a message on Thursday, 
and on Saturday morning sent the cook ahead on 
a mule with the baggage to a village seven miles 
away. In the afternoon I rode out with my syce, 
arriving just before sunset. The hamlet was as 
squalid as we could ask for ; it was bitterly cold 
after sundown, and there wasn't a stable in the 
place, so we had to knock a lot of wall away from 
the doorways of two rooms to let the ponies in. 
I was housed in a room with no windows and with 
a door three feet high. There was a fireplace and 
chimney however, so we soon had the thorns 
crackling, and with a lamp and a volume of 
Gibbon I passed the time comfortably till early 
bed. 

Next morning we were on the march before 
sunrise. An hour later we were scouting in the 
hills, and Sultan, who had climbed to the top of a 
range and was lying flat with his eyes on the prowl, 
turned his head to me. ' He has seen a few tame 
goats,' I thought, as I drew level and fumbled for 
my glass. He whispered the direction in his 
dialect, and I followed it as best I could, seeing 
many things which might have been sheep but 
turned out to be boulders. I grew hot with 
shame and called myself a blind fool to be out 
with a rifle. Eventually I picked them up — 
brown forms with white tail-spots — one, two, 
three, four, five. Ah ha ! And one of them had 
horns on his head. But a long distance off. 



42 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Away scuttled the shikari downhill, and I slithered 
after him, up and down by the way we had come, 
then round and along for half an hour till we came 
out on top of a rise and crawled up to eye-level. 
The sheep were there, a hundred yards nearer, 
but (I won't say whose fault it was) they were all 
standing still and gazing in our direction. So we 
lay there, moving nothing but our eyes, and wait- 
ing for the ram to show a broadside. It occurred 
to me that the shikari, crouching on the hilltop 
with his hat off and a headcloth bound across his 
forehead, looked finer than anything I had ever 
seen on canvas — which was natural enough, and a 
poor comparison at that. By and by the sheep 
appeared to get the order to stand easy, for they 
took to grazing again. I was cautiously preparing 
for a shot when the gentleman with the horns lay 
down and spoiled my chance. At that my gillie 
backed downhill again, and we made another 
detour to a knoll of bare ground that came out 
sixty yards from the sheep. An absurd distance, 
I thought, as I looked for some vantage-ground 
on top of the knoll. We crept like burglars to a 
piece of camel-thorn, making snakes of ourselves 
as we got near the top. Then I settled on my left 
elbow, brought my rifle forward, and raised my 
head. There he was facing me. As my head 
rose he leapt, and my hasty shot missed his tail 
as he disappeared round a corner, with all the 
harem after him. Alas ! I knew it, and now he 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 48 

was gone. Sultan turned his clear brown eyes 
on me, and I called myself names. A greenhorn, 
a deliberative blunderer, a gawky fool to come 
shooting ! 

An hour later we were on the top of the highest 
peak of this little range, and there in the valley 
below was a group of brown things, standing all 
together, undecided which way to move. They 
had heard or smelt danger. The distance was 
uncertain, and without using my glass I could 
just make out a ram in the middle. Sultan 
doesn't bother about heads and would have me 
bang off into the group. He thinks of his melon- 
crops and the pot, and he kept urging me. So I 
sighted for 250 yards, covered the ram just behind 
those half-invisible horns, and — bang ! Result ? 
Missed again, fathead ! Off went the lot. But 
they hadn't gone twenty yards when Sultan 
shouted ' Quch uftad ! ' and away he dashed 
down the perilous slope with a cartload of loosened 
stones rattling after him, and myself bumping 
along in his rear. 

The ram had dropped with a little hole in his 
side and his chest ripped open. The females 
halted within easy distance, watching us as we 
stood over him. They simply wouldn't fly, and 
Sultan was all for reducing their number. But 
I had had enough, and sat down trembling 
while he rolled up his sleeves like a butcher and 
drew a hunting-knife from his sash. He looked 



44 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

thoroughly happy now, and I was pleased, and 
listened with a smile to his repeated exclamations 
of satisfaction. He cleaned the animal deftly, 
skinned the hind legs and tied them together with 
the loose skin. Then he dragged it to a little 
pool and washed the gore from it and from his 
arms. The ram's eyes were glazed and he seemed 
to have shrunk. Only a three-year-old, but what 
matter ? It was my first shot at anything bigger 
than a hare, and I would not return empty-handed. 
So we had lunch, and drank what we had with us, 
there being no sweet water near. And I smoked 
a cigarette and thought many thoughts, counting 
myself by turns a joyous savage, a contemptible 
slaughterer, a great shikari, and a conceited ass. 
I finished by giving Sultan a present and telling 
him to shoulder the game, and we set off down 
the valley at one o'clock, Sultan leading by easy 
tracks along the level, with the beast dangling 
its legs and flopping its head behind him, and I 
following in his wake — a pretty picture for the 
disconsolate ewes, which were still watching 
us from the distance, looking for their dead 
lord. 

In an hour and a half we reached the horses at 
a place appointed for them to be in waiting. The 
game was strapped behind the saddle of my 
groom's pony, and so we rode for the town. 
When we got home, Cookie, who had returned 
in the morning, was waiting in the doorway. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 45 

He smiled his congratulations, eyed the corpse 
lovingly, and took it in. The sheep bobbed his 
head for the last time, and then lay still and cold 
in the compound. 

BiRjAND, 2Srd March 1914. 
Dear M., — ^The Duke, the Amir, the great man, 
has arrived from the capital, with his men-at-arms 
and his train of followers. Which is to say that 
the Governor has returned from Teheran. There 
was a great stir and clamour at his coming, as you 
may imagine, for I have told you how popular he 
is, and you know that a provincial ruler is a power- 
ful man in Persia. The town had a field-day for 
his entry, and did no work for three days, most 
of the chief people having ridden out thirty miles 
to welcome him and escort him in. X. and I 
sent him letters of salutation with mounted 
representatives who joined his escort. He must 
have been very tired, I 'm afraid, though very 
happy, for was he not returning to the home of 
his fathers and the people his fathers had ruled 
for generations, and had he not been honoured by 
the Shah and given an addition to the territories 
under his administration ? So the band played 
and the horses pranced and his carriage rolled 
past the town and across the plain to his house a 
couple of miles away. There he had a great 
reception, with muUas uttering benedictions and 
poets reciting odes. On the following afternoon 



46 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

I called on him and drank tea and exchanged 
polite remarks. He is a tall, lean man of about 
thirty-three, with fine-cut, mobile, Arab features, 
a prominent nose, and a sallow complexion. His 
voice is soft, his speech clear and rapid. His 
bearing is unaffected, and his manners are full 
of restrained vivacity and natural courtesy and 
gentleness. He is evidently a man of keen per- 
ceptions, with an active mind and a marked 
individuality, for which the gods be praised. He 
was accompanied by three young ofiicials — one of 
them our stout, ruddy-faced prince of the blood 
royal, the other two, just arrived with the Amir, 
being a vigorous and honest-looking officer of 
cavalry and a revenue collector. The last has an 
incipient beard, but the others, including the Amir, 
are cleanshaven but for their moustaches, which 
a Persian never on any account shaves. The 
revenue collector didn't seem at all pleased at the 
idea of living in such a hopeless little hole as 
Birjand, and he even said as much. The Amir, of 
course, showed no sign that he didn't like the 
remark, which somebody else countered by asking 
the tired one if he had not come here to have an 
occupation, and to be, in a sense, a guest. 

My visit was returned a few days afterwards, 
when the Amir told me he was getting his tennis- 
court ready and hoped we would meet there once 
a week and be good friends. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 47 

BiRJAND, 22nd May 1914. 

Dear M., — I have been out on a week-end visit 
to the south-east, seeking change, exercise, and 
adventure, just as you do at home. There is no 
change or adventure to be had in town, and no 
exercise but tennis, which we play about twice a 
week. So having heard of a wonderful cave which 
was of unknown extent and held many mysteries 
(including skeletons in open coffins), I gave the 
rein to my curiosity and rode off one afternoon like 
a knight of the Middle Ages. Towards sunset I 
arrived at Noufrist, a fair-sized garden-village at 
the foot of the hills about seventeen miles away. 
My cook, on a mule, had preceded me hy some 
hours, and had walked in on an old merchant 
friend of his master's with the alarming news that 
I was coming on behind and would be his guest 
for the night. 

The dear old man was quite composed when I 
turned up, and we had a cheery tea-talk together, 
after which we strolled about his orchard-garden. 
The almonds, alas, had just been nipped by frost, 
but Haji took a comforting pride in his peach, 
apricot, and cherry trees, ajid his patches of green 
barley and lucerne. We had our evening meal 
early, as I knew my host liked to go to bed be- 
times and get up for his prayers before sunrise. 
He told me all about his carpet factory, which was 
established in Noufrist and which he had come 



48 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

out from Birjand to look after for awhile. We 
discussed prices and materials and workers, and 
I realised that, apart from moneymaking, this 
modest capitalist of the old school was happy in 
the knowledge that the hand-looms owned by him 
provided bread for the mouths of over a hundred 
boys and men. We talked about the increase in 
the cost of living owing to higher standards, and 
he described to me the simple life of forty years 
ago when food was cheap and foreign luxuries 
were unknown. That brought us to the subject 
of longevity, and he assured me that he himself 
had seen two cases of men whose sight had im- 
proved a little after they had passed their hun- 
dredth year, and whose empty gums had at the 
same time produced some new teeth. As Haji 
is very honest and intelligent and never talks 
nonsense, I had to believe him. He has a title, 
given him by the Governor, which means Chief of 
the Merchants, and that is actually his position. 
He is a shrewd and quick-witted old man, frugal 
and regular in his habits and observances, and 
gifted with much cheery humour and common 
sense. In Birjand he i-ules his class, and any 
dispute between shopkeepers or traders is referred 
to him informally for arrangement. In serious 
trouble or on points of law, recourse is had to the 
religious leaders or to the civil government, with 
both of which powers his influence is considerable. 
Merchants in Persia generally have not the spirit 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 49 

of co-operation necessary to form effective guilds, 
but they have always their leaders, and my old 
friend is a worthy representative. 

Next morning we visited his workshop, a 
rectangular mud-brick building with a double line 
of looms on each side of a central passage, lighted 
by a doorway at each end and by holes in the roof. 
The little fellows were seated on planks in front 
of the upright looms, and their nimble fingers 
were busy with wool and yarn and scissors and 
tightening-forks. On our entrance they set up a 
shout of respectful prayer for their master which 
was pleasant to hear. 

After a look round I rode off into the hills and 
followed an up-and-down track till I came at 
midday to Chinisht, the site of the magic cave, 
where I dismounted under a big plane tree and 
walked through the tortuous lanes of the village, 
coming to rest in a little room. There I found 
myself surrounded by a full dozen men and boys, 
soft-featured beings dressed in bright-hued tunics 
and with round caps ribbed and embroidered 
in gay colours like the headgear of a dervish. 
' Why,' said I, ' you can't all be dervishes, 
surely ? ' Whereat they laughed merrily and 
said they were so. They looked very prosperous 
and cheery, so I asked the little red-bearded 
spokesman how a village could support itself with 
a population of idle dervishes who, by their looks, 
loved to sit i' the sun and do no work. My sur- 

D 



50 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

prise tickled him and the whole fraternity of jolly 
beggars immensely, but the question wasn't 
answered very satisfactorily. I learned after- 
wards that the women do the field work. On the 
way back to Noufrist I was told that one of the 
cunning practices of these holy men is to display 
the white mark of the prophet's hand on their 
brown sunburnt shoulders, which proof of sanctity 
and divine favour brings grist to their mill. The 
miracle is worked by pasting on the shoulder a 
piece of paper cut in the shape of a hand, which 
is removed when the surrounding skin has been 
well darkened by exposure to the sun. 

I passed the evening at Noufrist with a young 
friend who owns a shady garden full of old mul- 
berry trees, in the midst of which we dined and 
talked about land and crops. He is a bright lad 
with effeminate features and a sensuous lip and 
eye, but he keeps himself manly by the business 
of looking after a number of estates which he 
has inherited. He explained to me how the local 
people dealt in land, which they reckon not by the 
acre but by the quantity of grain seed sown on it 
or by its water-rights. Here, where all the water 
used for irrigation flows through privately-owned 
courses and is brought underground to its destina- 
tion, a piece of cultivated land is described in a 
deed of sale as so many shares of water in such and 
such a situation. The water is not measured by 
quantity, but apportioned by time-allotments, a 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 51 

ihare of twenty-four hours' flow of each course 
being subdivided into allowances of one hour or 
more. In this way each owner across whose land 
the water passes receives his regular time-allow- 
ance of the whole stream, which he directs over his 
property by little irrigation channels. Quaint 
and incomprehensible ? Quite so, and to explain 
the whole business I should have to write a long 
account which you would certainly fall asleep over. 
Meanwhile you are wondering what I saw in the 
mysterious cave at Chinisht. Well, I will confess 
I have a horror of prisoned spaces, and wouldn't 
climb through a chimney or crawl through a 
drain pipe even if I knew Dover was at the other 
end. So after sliding down and along a hole two 
feet in diameter for five yards, I scrambled up 
again, leaving the skeletons undisturbed. It was 
a shameful retreat, but after all there are people 
who can't look over a precipice. Alas for the 
knights of the Middle Ages ! 

BiRJAND, 30/^ June 1914. 
Dear M., — We have all been to school, to the 
Madreseh Shoukatieh (the Shoukat's College), to 
hear the boys examined on the last day before 
their summer holidays. You know what the 
ordinary idea of a school is in the backwaters of 
Persia — a room where a few urchins have the 
three R's hammered into them by a fusty old 
pedagogue full of wise saws and pious cant. The 



52 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

late Amii Shoukat ul Mulk, brother of the present 
governor of the same title, bequeathed part of his 
estates for educational purposes, and this trust 
was applied by his successor in founding and 
maintaining a school worthy of his name. The 
result of six years' work is something to be proud 
of, and the present Shoukat ul Mulk gets all the 
credit for it. Why ? Because, instead of forget- 
ting his obligations and allowing the bequest to 
be dissipated as bequests so often are in Persia, 
he has actually applied the trust for the good of 
the rising generation. 

Education was in the air in those revolutionary 
days. Effete old Persia, fired by the examples of 
Japan and Turkey, was thinking repentantly of 
her sons, and borrowing, for their guidance, the 
light of European science. So the old town cita- 
del was put to new uses, and the boys of Birjand 
were invited to come there and be taught as their 
fathers never had been. Instructors were brought 
from Teheran, and pupils of all classes were 
admitted free. Maps were put on the walls, and 
the boys learned for the first time that there was 
a science called geography, and that ancient 
history was something different from mythology. 
The little fellows entered a new world of fairy tale, 
and shocked their fathers and mothers with asser- 
tions about the Law of Gravity and how the sun 
and the moon were made and how ridiculously 
the earth behaved, all of which made the dear old 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 53 

muUas shake their heads. The boys of the first 
year are now young men, and in another year they 
will complete their studies and go out with an 
elementary knowledge of such things as hygiene 
and the French language. 

For the closing day we received and accepted 
written invitations from the headmaster, and at 
nine o'clock we went along to the school, shook 
hands with the teachers, sat down and drank tea. 
The Governor arrived in his carriage and drank 
tea likewise, and the boys were marshalled into 
the big hall, at the end of which they stood facing 
us till they were ordered to sit. In the front row 
were children of six or seven, with the big boys of 
eighteen to twenty-five behind, all with their legs 
tucked under them and their knees on the carpet, 
which is a more respectful but less comfortable 
posture than cross-legged squatting. The boys, 
even the youngest, were dressed in a variety of 
frock-coats, long trousers, and the native white 
slippers, and they all bore the school badge in 
silver on their black pill-box hats. They num- 
bered about a hundred, and represented all grades 
of society, the deputy-governor's son rubbing 
shoulders with the son of his servant or of some 
small shopkeeper. The boys pay nothing for 
their education, and some of the poorest of them 
are even clothed and fed at the school's expense. 
The half-dozen teachers sat at one side of the hall 
and called the boys out before us in turn, com- 



54 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

mencing with the youngest, who were made to 
write a few words on the blackboard, speUing 
aloud as they wrote. The second class read from 
a little book of moral anecdotes. Deep voice and 
shrill voice, pale face and rosy cheek, shy boy and 
bold boy alternated. The little fellows stumped 
away and the bigger ones stalked forward. The 
third class did a few quick examples in arithmetic 
on the blackboard, and answered questions in 
elementary geography. Then we had some ecclesi- 
astical biography, which was followed by answers 
on questions of style in verse- writing, illustrated 
by copious quotations from the poetry of Sadi. 
These points of style related to metaphor and 
allusion and verbal conceits, and not at all to 
verse-forms or measure. Reading in Arabic 
followed, and then examination in history. As 
we were invited to ask questions, I asked the 
master if any one could tell us what was the use of 
studying history. A tall boy with a large head 
promptly returned the shock by replying that 
history made us acquainted with our ancestors, 
and enabled us to benefit in the present from the 
experience of the past, besides giving us models 
of conduct and action. A race that knew not its 
history, he said, was like a child that knew not its 
father. I was further surprised when another boy 
with a solemn face and a twinkling eye replied 
correctly to my direct question in elementary 
geology, that the Birjand valley was formed by 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 55 

alluvial deposit, and that the surrounding hills 
were composed mainly of limestone. 

The senior French class came last, and was put 
through its paces by the revenue collector. 
Persians are good linguists, but this particular 
batch was not a very bright one, though they 
probably read as well as the average boy in the 
average English school. Three of these young 
men were friends of mine, who come to my house 
twice a week for instruction in English. They 
are the cleverest boys in the school, and I find 
their society very refreshing. If they haven't 
learned much of our difficult language, they have 
certainly helped me a lot with their own tongue 
and with Arabic. We talk together, like the 
Walrus and the Carpenter, of things in general, 
including politics, and their unsophisticated re- 
flections are always diverting and often illumi- 
nating. Native politeness and respect prevent 
them from being over-critical of our aims and our 
methods, but the face of the youngest usually 
tells me what they really think about such ques- 
tions. They were frankly annoyed with me some 
time ago, as being a subject of King George, for 
a remark of the Foreign Secretary which they 
had seen reported in a Teheran newspaper. Sir 
Edward Grey, it appeared, had stated in Parlia- 
ment that in his opinion the whole of Persia was 
not worth the blood of one British soldier. Was 
this, they asked, the utterance of a responsible 



56 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Minister of State ? Was this expression of in- 
sufferable arrogance and contempt the fruit of 
England's greatness ? I suggested that Sir 
Edward Grey had been mistranslated, or that 
his words merely meant that a policy of pure 
aggression anywhere was not worth a single life's- 
blood. But their pride (the fiery pride of youth) 
was badly hurt, and they boiled with indignation. 
Certainly one likes to think that one's country 

is worth invading. 

BiRJAND, lOth August 1914. 

Dear M., — ^I hope you are sorry for me. I have 
never wanted to see a daily paper so much in my 
life, and the London papers take eighteen days or 
more to reach here. What is happening — what 
are people saying—what is the country doing — 
how did it all come about ? 

We shall learn in time, I suppose. I got a 
telegram on the 2nd which rather puzzled me, so I 
wired back for an explanation. The reply came 
on the 3rd. ' Situation in Europe very grave.' 
' H'm ! what a nuisance. Those naughty boys 
in the Balkans again, I suppose, throwing stones 
at each other.' Thinking these great thoughts, 
I walked across to see X. ' Hullo ! any news 
from Seistan ? I 've just had a wire from Meshed 
saying that the situation in Europe is grave.' 
' Have you ? ' said X. ; 'I haven't heard any- 
thing. Stop and have tea.' So I stopped and 
had tea, and some tennis afterwards, and he beat 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 57 

me 6—1, 6—2, and so on, as he always does. 
Next morning I had a note from him. ' You 
were right yesterday. Read this.' And then 
followed little bits of news that he had received on 
the wire. Next morning came other little bits of 
news, and thereafter Renter danced a fiery squib- 
dance daily. Russia in — France in — Belgium in — 
England in — we began to see red. The little old 
Russian telegraphist, who drinks cocoa and buys 
fox-skins and feeds his great watch-dogs on dead 
donkeys, walked in on us with a quizzical smile. 
' Have you any news ? ' he asked in his broken 
Persian, which is the only language we have in 
common. He always gets his news belated. 
'None whatever,' said X., looking unconcerned. 
The old man smiled, and looked hard and long at 
us. ' When I put my ear to the ground,' said he, 
' I can hear the sound of Austrian guns.' Then 
slowly, deliberately, a trifle anxiously, he put the 
question that had been troubling his mind. ' Are 

you — ^with us — or against us ? ' Whereon we 

both shook his hand violently, and the alliance 
was confirmed. 

The natives have had the news from us, and 
they begin to see trouble ahead. Some of them 
can't understand that the British Empire should 
be actually at war. That great and strong power 
— ^what need can it have to fight, and who is this 
unheard-of enemy that must feel the weight of its 
blow ? Most of them know nothing of Germany 



58 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

but the name, which they use in describing syn- 
thetic indigo, known as nil i almani. They ask 
me why the Inglees are fighting, and I tell them 
that the Beast of Europe has lowered his horns, 
and that we and our friends are out to chain him 
up. They ask me how long it will last, and I tell 
them three months, or perhaps six. They don't 
like that, because their export trade has been 
stopped, and they say that if it lasts six months 
the carpet- makers will all be bankrupt. Well, 
judging by the articles I used to read in the heavy 
Reviews it will be a short affair— a succession of 
deadly blows and rapid rushes, chaos generally, 
and then a financial smash-up somewhere that 
will lead to peace. The odds are with us, which 
seems rather lucky. The heavy Reviews always 
discussed single combat. They used to point across 
to Kiel and invite us to fear the foe in shining 
armour and to get ready for biffing him. We didn't 
appear to bother about it, but perhaps the men at 
the wheel weren't asleep really. There are three 
of us together now, and although it 's a strange 
alliance in one respect, I suppose it settles the 
upshot. So when a Persian asks if we are sure to 
win, I reply that the fate of countries at war is 
with God, but that I shall be considerably sur- 
prised if by any chance we should happen to lose. 
I dare guess that you have taken to reading 
newspapers, and that you have had a continuous 
revel of excited discussion with all sorts of people 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 59 

during the last ten days. I have had about two 
columns of news altogether since the end of July, 
and I pant for the Weeklies to talk it over with. 
You can't ' discuss ' things with Renter as you can 
with a leading article. 

Above and before all I shall look for a long 

letter from you. 

BiRJAND, 14^^ November 1914. 

Dear M.,— My three months' allowance for the 
war has expired, and apparently the fighting 
hasn't yet started properly. Meanwhile I am 
getting a wonderful knowledge of geography, as 
I refer to a big atlas almost daily — Eastern 
Belgium, Lorraine, Northern France, Eastern 
Prussia, Galicia, and now we 're off to Turkey and 
the Black Sea. 

Persia is very excited about Turkey, and doesn't 
know how to behave herself. She and the Turk 
follow the same prophet, though they curse each 
other's sects at times just as Protestant and 
Roman Catholic used to do. Persia's politicians 
are rather like spoilt children whom people 
meddle with too much, and they simply can't sit 
still. They must be spilling their tea, or smash- 
ing auntie's china, or begging for more cake. 
Just now they are all agog with ideas. They see 
that Britain and Russia are rather preoccupied 
with European affairs, and they discuss with each 
other the advantages to be drawn from this new 
situation. * Our northern neighbour,' they say. 



60 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

* has his hands very full, and will not be for some 
time quite so aggressive as he has been. We shall 
see what we shall see. Perhaps we can induce 
him to clear out of our province of Azerbaijan, 
or perhaps the Turks may come in and drive him 
out for us. At any rate, there is money to be made 
somehow, so we must be friends with everybody 
in the meantime, and play our cards cleverly.' 

The Governor has gone off to Seistan with his 
troops — infantry, cavalry, artillery, and camel 
corps, about four hundred in all. They are a 
mixed lot, but they happen to have two or three 
good officers. The colonel in command of the 
cavalry is a young man of about thirty-two, alert 
and athletic and a hard worker, full of energy 
and enthusiasm. He has been learning to play 
tennis all summer, dashing about the court like a 
young antelope. The Amir has gone south to put 
the Baluch tribes in order, and he and his army 
won't be back till the spring. We shall miss 
them very much this winter. 

We have made the painful discovery that the 
news we get isn't quite reliable. The official 
reports tell half-truths, and some of the news- 
paper correspondents report with a flourish any 
old yam they get hold of, and the censors 
apparently help to mystify matters, so that we 
have to read between the lines. The papers are 
interesting, and we devour them eagerly. The 
mails come through very slowly. I have just had 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 61 

a letter that I wrote home last July returned to 
me from Russia, for no apparent reason. 

BiRjAND, 10^^ February 1915. 

Dear M., — Your letter of 18th November turned 
up yesterday, and with the same mail came one 
from P. R., dated 1st January, and giving me the 
joyful news that he was in khaki. I have Avritten 
him a long letter which will bore him terribly no 
doubt, and I am wondering where and when it 
will find him— the state of the mails is so exas- 
perating. If P. R. comes through this all right he 
will congratulate himself for the rest of his life on 
having done the right thing. It seems to me that 
in this very uncertain world there is absolutely 
nothing so clear as a man's duty in this one 
respect. The thing is sublimely simple, too, for 
a young bachelor with no responsibilities. He 
takes one step— or he doesn't. If he doesn't he 's 
either a fraud or a failure, and if his body is 
healthy he must have a diseased mind. It is the 
unfailing test of sanity and virtue. 

I know you agree with me. I have always 
known it, but have you not just told me that you 
are flitting about in a Red Cross uniform ? Those 
ambulance classes, and those ingenious bandages 
that you used to manipulate for my instruction — 
I little thought, two years ago, that they would 
serve so fine a purpose, or that you would ever 
see real blood flow from a soldier's wounds. I 



i2 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

suppose that you were ' secretly preparing ' all 
the time, and that it 's only another proof that 
the diabolical British were planning this war for 
years past. Well, I shall kiss the dust of your 
feet for ever. 

Between us three, I am tired of ranters. I 
should like to see some enemy newspapers for a 
change. It would be nicer to smile at the pug- 
nacious cant of G. politicians than it is to read the 
heroics of our own tub-thumpers. I wonder how 
many platform speakers, in all the belligerent 
countries, have sworn that they will fight to the 
last man, the last drop of blood, and the last 
shilling, franc, rouble, mark, or krone, as the case 
may be ? But I suppose things like that have to 
be said to warm the blood of the proletariat. 

BiRJAND, 22nd May 1915. 

Dear M., — The Governor has returned. His 
adventures with his gallant army among the 
Baluch tribesmen of the south make rather a lame 
story, so we won't talk about them. He looks a 
little haggard and tired, and his health appears to 
have suffered from the climate do^vn below. The 
members of his entourage who went with him into 
camp at Kuh Malek Siah (Black Chief Mountain) 
discovered while they were there what a fine place 
Birjand is. They hadn't realised that before, so 
the expedition has had some good results. For 
the rest, there was a very little blood-letting, and 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS iS 

a good deal of palaver, and no harm was done for 
the time being. 

India, from all I hear, is behaving very well, 
Turkey and all notwithstanding. Which reminds 
me that the other day my Persian factotum 
entered my room with a very intrigui air, on top 
of which was an apologetic smile. We had a 
sitting behind closed doors for five minutes, and 
he told me that the chief priest had received a 
document signed by the religious leaders at Najaf, 
and directing the people of Persia to make holy 
war on the English and the Russians. The chief 
priest had shown the document to the Amir, who 
had advised him to suppress it for the present. 
' Well,' said I, ' I suppose this has been sent to all 
towns in the country, and it is bound to get spread 
about. There may be some preaching in the 
mosques on the subject, and the common people 
may get excited. They may collect in crowds 
and work themselves into a fanatical fury. Some 
of them, the more ignorant, will then think it a 
pious deed to — er — ^to hasten our departure to the 
lower world. Is that correct ? ' ' Yes, sahib, it 
is possible.' ' That,' said I, ' would be rather an 
amusing turn of affairs.' ' But it will not happen,' 
said he, ' because to set up a jehad it is necessary 
that the Government should order it, and the in- 
visible Imam should reappear to sanction and 
direct it.' ' In that case,' said I, ' we need not 
heed this document. The Turks are fighting 



64 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

against brother Mohammedans of India, and their 
aUies in this war are Christian people. Therefore 
the Government will not order a jehad, and the 
holy Imam will not reappear to sanction it. The 
mullas of Najaf have been misled, or their seals 
have been forged. It is interesting news, but we 
will think no more about it.' 

There is a Persian newspaper printed in Cal- 
cutta which comes to me every week, and it has 
always some interesting and fairly impartial 
comments on the war. The chief news article 
used to be headed ' The War of the Seven Armies,' 
and grew to the ' War of the Nine Armies.' I 
really believe the old editor is eagerly looking 
forward to the entry of a few more belligerents 
in order to make his headline still more impressive. 
Nevertheless, he keeps on urging Persia to safe- 
guard her neutrality and to fish these troubled 
waters for what she can catch without wetting 
her own feet — Machiavellian advice, which I 
suppose expresses the policy of the neutral 
Balkan states as well at present. 

BiRjAND, 30th June 1915. 
Dear M., — ^Many thanks for the copies of Land 
and Water you have been sending. They were 
very illuminating at first, but I 'm afraid we 're all 
getting sophisticated and sceptical. The pro- 
phets have made such bad guesses all round that 
we can't believe them any more. We used to 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 65 

have a high and cheerful faith in their logic, but 
now we only look for results and don't care a bit 
for prognostications of crushing disasters here 
and sweeping victories there. The front-page 
articles of the T.L.S. seem to me disappointing. 
Is half the intellect and learning of England 
talking like that just now, and does the other half 
really listen to it ? I suppose, while the men of 
action are busy with fate, the parsons of the Press 
must rightly be busy with sermons. But is it 
with such ethical meanderings and ruminations 
that they should ' be copy now to men of grosser 
blood, and teach them how to war ' ? 

The Teheran newspapers are getting rather 
partial to the enemy, and just a trifle bellicose. 
The retreat of Russia in Europe has given them 
boldness, and no doubt the numerous German, 
Austrian, and Turkish emissaries and agents in 
the capital have bought as many friends as they 
can. So the editors read the reports of both sides, 
and study the maps of Belgium and Northern 
France and Poland, and compare achievements to 
date, and nod their wise heads and set their pens 
scraping in praise of the Kaiser and the Turk, and 
in pity for Russia who (they say) wants peace, 
and in scorn for England who won't let her make 
it but lends her money at interest instead. And 
the daring spirits dream of an Islamic alliance of 
Turkey and Persia and Afghanistan and Moham- 
medan India, with the Kaiser as fairy godfather. 



66 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

But Persia at large distrusts the Turk and fears 
the savage Afghan, and the sober-minded men who 
keep things going reahse that Russia is still a 
mighty power and perilously near at hand, while 
the fairy godfather lives a long way off. They 
also realise that Egypt is secure so far, while 
Constantinople may not be. They know that 
India is with us and is advancing up the Tigris 
towards Baghdad. So they say, ' Let us bear 
with the tutelage that we have suffered for a 
hundred years. We and our fathers have watched 
the rivalry and jealousy between Britain and 
Russia in Persia for a full century, and we have 
even taken advantage of it on many occasions by 
knocking their heads together. We have never 
been afraid of Britain, because Britain has always 
wanted us to be a buffer state and retain our 
independence like Afghanistan. Now that these 
two powerful rivals have made friendship, it is 
very unfortunate for us, and we must be careful. 
Let us wait a little longer, and in the meantime let 
us try to borrow some more money from them, 
for our trade is badly damaged, and our revenues 
have declined, and our forces are disunited as 
they always have been, and our army is but a 
poor thing at best and could not stand up for a 
moment against such terrible warfare as is going 
on in Europe.' And a sage old mulla mutters an 
Arabic quotation in his beard and winds up the 
argument in a deep voice full of authority and 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 67 

conviction. ' Let the Christians eat each other,' 
he says ; ' the Turk was a fool.' 

The Germans have taken a sudden interest in 
the trade of several towns of Persia, and have sent 
representatives to Kermanshah and Hamadan 
and Isfahan. In the last-named town, which is 
right in the centre of Persia, they appear to be 
taking a particularly lively interest. Can it be 
that they are already preparing to monopolise 
Persia's foreign trade after they will have de- 
feated us satisfactorily ? It is even reported 
that they are engaging a greater number of 
servants than they require, and that one or two 
of them are travelling eastwards. 

The Amir is himself again, or nearly so, though 
his tennis isn't quite so good as it used to be. 

BiRJAND, 29th July 1915. 

Dear M., — The plot thickens. The conspirators 
are coming on. The mischief-makers of Europe 
are popping up in Persia, of all places. The 
telegraph instruments in Birjand — think of it ! — 
are ticking all day, and maps are being studied as 
they never were before. I told you last month that 
there were Germans in the west of Persia and in 
Isfahan. After that we heard of Germans in 
Yezd, and in Kerman, and in Tun, and in Tabas, 
and so gradually nearer till before we knew where 
we were a couple of them arrived in Kain with a 
band of Persian mercenaries, and demanded hos- 



68 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

pitality from the wondering townspeople. Now 
the town of Kain is seventy miles north of Birjand, 
which is three days' journey, so the question is 
where they are going next. The Amir has tele- 
graphed asking them their business, and they say 
they are peaceful travellers. Very good, very 
good indeed ! But it is whispered that they have 
a lot of mules loaded with rifles and ammunition 
and mysterious boxes. It is pointed out to the 
Amir that they are the enemies of Britain, and 
that they should not be allowed to travel about 
neutral territory with such merchandise. The 
Amir says if they come to Birjand he will see about 
it. The reply is that if they are allowed to come 
and establish themselves here, they may make it 
unpleasant for him, and they will certainly make 
it unpleasant for us. So the Amir asks what he 
can do. ' Arrest them,' is the reply. ' Send 
them home again if you like.' ' Peaceful travel- 
lers ? ' says the governor of Kain and Seistan. 
' Peaceful fiddlesticks,' say we. The Amir looks 
grave, and says he can't interfere with them 
without orders from the capital, as it would be a 
breach of neutrality. ' But they are an armed 
party of belligerents, and they have violated your 
neutrality ! ' The Amir suggests that it is a long, 
long way from Turkey to Birjand, and that we 
have told him that the G.'s have come right 
across Persia, and that there are more G.'s in the 
big towns between here and the west. ' Why 
didn't you have them stopped before ? ' ' Ask 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 69 

us another,' say we. ' Well, if my government 
hasn't interfered before,' he asks, ' how can I 
interfere now without orders ? ' ' Then please 
get the orders,' we reply, ' and, meanwhile, before 
it is too late, we will do it ourselves, if you don't 
mind.' ' Very good,' says the Amir, ' I 'have no 
objection.' So there the matter stands. 

We are in the middle of Ramazan, when the 
people fast from before sunrise till after sunset. 
How would you like to pass the long hot summer 
days without even a drink of water ? And how 
would you like to be my cook, who prepares 
master's meals and goes hungry himself ? I 
wonder if he really does. The opium-smokers 
have to break the fast, as they are the slaves of 
the pipe. The opium-smokers of Birjand make 
at least one-third of the population, male and 
female. Of the rest, many in ill-health are excused 
by the doctors from fasting, and many eat and 
drink in secret. The others have a meal after 
sunset and another before dawn, and so turn 
night into day. 

Birjand, lUh August 1915. 

Dear M., — After a year of war it looks as if we 
may have some excitement even in Birjand. 
The great game of Puss-in-the-Corner has com- 
menced. The first move was by the peaceful 
travellers who came along to Kain and squatted 
on people's floors and drank their tea, and smiled 
when they were asked their business. The second 
move was made by a company of Cossacks in khaki 



70 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

and forage caps, and mounted on tough little 
Russian horses, and with rifles and bayonets and a 
plentiful supply of cartridges slung about them. 

These cavaliers had come from Russia to Meshed, 
and from Meshed to Turbat and down to Gunabad ; 
and hearing of strangers in the vicinity they had 
shown a laudable eagerness to meet them. So 
they rode along to Kain at two o'clock one morn- 
ing and were received with a volley from the 
peaceful travellers, who had posted a night guard 
on the main gate of the town. As you can't 
storm the gate of a Persian town in the middle of 
the night with a company of tired men when the 
walls are guarded, the Cossacks eventually retired 
to a safe distance and established themselves in a 
village a few miles eastward over the plain, where 
they remained. The peaceful travellers, being 
in no mind for another exchange of greetings, 
left Kain in a hurry that day and went back the 
way they had come, leaving the greater part of 
their ' merchandise ' behind them. Next morn- 
ing our Russian friends walked in and found that 
the bird had flown. So they collected the rifles 
and ammunition and mysterious boxes, and after 
a day or two sent them off to Meshed, and they 
themselves left Kain and went off to catch Puss, 
and we haven't heard anything more of them. 
In Birjand we have now about fifty Cossacks, who 
arrived on the 31st July. 

The Amir has sent up a new deputy-governor to 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 71 

Kain, and as X. was going up on a flying visit, 
and I wanted a change of air, we all went to- 
gether. We left on the 4th and got back here 
two days ago. In K^in I made two new acquaint- 
ances, both of whom were Seyyids, descendants 
of the prophet. The first was a burly merchant 
with a bushy beard, a gruff voice, and a bluff 
manner. His way of offering us cigarettes when 
we returned his call was rather unconventional. 
As there were five visitors he took five long cigar- 
ettes from a glass dish on his table, and putting 
them one by one in his mouth, set them alight 
and gave them all a good start in life. He then 
handed them round, and we smoked them duti- 
fully. In Birjand I sometimes visit a cheery old 
man whose servant invariably does the same for 
me. It is the Kalyan method. The native water- 
pipe is prepared by a servant, who draws at it 
vigorously tc set it going before he brings it in. 
The same mouthpiece is used by him and by all 
the guests in turn. 

My other new acquaintance was the chief priest 
of Kain, an old man robed in black, with rolling 
orbs, a huge dark-blue turban, and a pulpit 
voice. We met him unexpectedly at the deputy- 
governor's house, where he was found sitting in 
wait for us, with a large following of blue-turbaned 
Seyyids squatted in the compound facing the 
little casemented room. The old muUa had a 
great deal to say, and had evidently prepared his 



72 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

» 
oration. He spoke for about ten minutes, his 
voice booming and resounding in the ears of the 
attentive crowd below. He sat with his slender 
hand on a thin walking-stick, the handle of which 
was a life-like figure of a saucy little cock in 
enamel and turquoise — so life-like that it looked 
as if it might crow its applause at the most 
dramatic moments. The old man sat erect, with 
his body motionless. His head rose and fell, and 
anon turned slowly to right and left like a camel's, 
while the whites of his eyes gleamed awesomely. 
When his address of welcome and appeal was over 
and had been suitably replied to, his voice sub- 
sided, his face assumed a smile, and his manner 
became social. When we left the house he rose 
and raised his hand to each of us as if in blessing. 
I am told that this old man rules the morals of the 
little town with a firm hand. When the tale of 
some particularly pungent peccadillo sets his ears 
tingling, he is wont to rise in wrath, and with a 
voice of thunder command his servant to fetch the 
great sword of his grandfather that he may sally 
forth and deal justice on the miscreant. I sup- 
pose he really keeps a sword in his house, though 
what he could or would do with it I can't imagine. 
On the way back to Birjand we stopped at 
Sihdeh, a prosperous big village in a compara- 
tively fertile plain. This village is the district 
headquarters of the Ismaili sect, the followers of 
His Highness the Agha Khan of India. Their 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 73 

former local chief was our host, and we made the 
acquaintance of his son-in-law, the present head 
of the sect in the Kain district. The son-in-law 
is a man of thirty- five or thereabouts, and has the 
reputation of being a freethinker. His chief 
occupations appear to be the making of wine and 
the writing of verse. The wine he mostly drinks 
himself, and the poems he recites to any convivial 
guests who may happen along and who may be 
willing to sit up till midnight listening to them. 
When we called on him he produced a bottle of 
extra special vintage, broke the seal of flour paste, 
removed the paper stopper, and announced, with 
a sparkling eye, that this was very old wine— no 
less than two years old. 

After Sihdeh we spent a night at Saqi, a poor 
little village in the hills eighteen miles north of 
Biijand. Here, too, there was a poet, and we put 
up in his humble dwelling. He is a tallish old 
peasant with a bent back and red-dyed beard, and 
we first saw him in the late afternoon squatted in 
his compound with three village cronies, gathered 
round a copy of the Koran which he was reading 
aloud. The old man stumbled painfully through 
the Arabic, returning to correct his mistakes as 
he read. He was pulled up repeatedly for errors 
of diction by one of the cronies who appeared 
to have a better memory of the classic tongue. 
Arabic is to a Persian who doesn't understand it 
a much more vital thing than Latin is to a devout 



74 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

and unlearned Roman Catholic. The education 
of the common people in Persia is still to a great 
extent taken up with learning to read the Islamic 
scripture in an unknown language. You will 
appreciate the advantage of this drilled ignorance 
to the cult of the priesthood. 

Later in the day the old fellow came into our 
room to fetch a book, and I tackled him on the 
subject of his poems. He shook his head very 
slowly, and said that he wrote nothing nowadays. 
' The market is not what it used to be. In the 
old days the governors and great people would 
reward me well for an ode. Now . . .' The 
times and manners have changed, and a poet's 
adulation is no longer acknowledged by filling his 
mouth with gold. In his turn he asked me some 
questions. ' What has been happening in Kain 
town ? What is all this about Alvan ? Who are 
these people, and what do they want ? It is said 
that they are peaceful travellers, who pay well and 
don't vex any one. Why have the Russians 
fought with them ? What is Alvan ? Is it a 
powerful country ? ' Alvan is the peasant's 
version of Alman, which is the Persian for Alle- 
magne, which is the French for — well, it 's the 
French for a lot of things nowadays. 

BiRJAND, 19th September 1915. 
Dear M., — I have been away on a three weeks' 
dash to Seistan and back. Seistan is 250 miles 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 75 

south-east of Birjand, and is one of the innumer- 
able spots known to a certain kind of Britisher as 
' The last place that God made.' I should prob- 
ably never have visited it but for the fact that I 
found my sight rather damaged when I returned 
from Kain, and had to go all that distance to get 
it examined. The result was fairly satisfactory, 
so I shan't have to wear a placard and carry a tin 
box just yet. On the journey I travelled by 
night and passed the days in dark rooms with 
closed doors, but as the road is iminteresting I 
didn't miss much. 

On the way down I met some of our Indian 
troops coming up to Birjand in search of adven- 
ture, and in Seistan I found a good many more. 
The officers are very keen on the new Puss-in-the- 
Corner game, though I think they would rather 
have gone to Flanders. Their Seistan mess is in 
the consulate bungalow, and every evening they 
cross over to the bank court for tennis. The 
Sandhurst type is varied by the addition of one or 
two Indian Army Reserve men, civilians with the 
universities behind them and their careers in the 
making. The troops are fine cheery fellows — a 
mixture of Sikhs and Mohammedans, cavalry and 
infantry, with a few machine guns. They have 
come all the 480 miles from Nushki to Seistan on 
camels, and the amount of supply and transport 
they go in for is extraordinary. 

To get to Seistan I had to cross the Hamun, a 



76 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

broad sheet of water which comes down from the 
Afghanistan highlands and spreads itself over the 
low country. The crossing is done in flat canoe- 
shaped rafts made of reeds and date palm, which 
are punted gently along through several feet of 
water by a bare-legged savage standing in the 
stern. I arrived at the water's edge shortly after 
sunset, and there was a great hullabaloo for over 
half an hour, at the end of which I got on my horse 
and rode for twenty yards through sloppy marsh 
to the raft. My kit had been placed on other 
rafts, and my ponies were stripped and taken in 
tow. We pushed off in line, and I lay back very 
comfortably with quilts and blankets and pillows 
under me cunningly arranged to soften the bones 
of the date stems and invite me to sleep. We 
glided along through a narrow clearing in a forest 
of reeds fifteen feet high, with the moon overhead 
and a light breeze rustling, and the cluck-cluck of 
sleepy waterfowl in the reeds alongside. I thought 
of gondolas in Venice and punts on the Thames, 
and anon I fancied myself once more on the Shatt 
el Arab, being borne in a belam from Basreh down 
to Muhammerah on a moonlit night in April with 
a couple of Arab belamchis crooning over their 
paddles in the bow. Heaven is in such memories 
and in the precious moments when they are 
awakened. I was supremely happy for ten 
minutes, when — bzzz ! a little fellow sounded his 
bugle note in my ear. Reveille ! My dreams 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 77 

were dispelled, and I was back on the mosquito- 
plagued Hamun with my head under a fold of 
muslin netting and the little wretches recon- 
noitring around me. After the first panic, how- 
ever, I ignored the evil and sat up and smoked. 
We glided on noiselessly, with just a faint steady 
splosh from my pony treading the water behind, 
and the sound of a boy singing softly in the rear 
of the line. My servant, who had supplied my 
wants and had no further use for me, curled 
himself up between master and the bare-legged 
savage. He was soon asleep and snoring a 
gentle lullaby, till I too slept. 

When I woke again it was nearly midnight, and 
we had reached dry land. The baggage was taken 
off, and the horses were rubbed down and given 
their nosebags. I returned to my raft and slept 
again till it was light, when a two hours' canter 
across the plain brought me to Seistan. 

While in Seistan I renewed acquaintance with 
the revenue collector, a hirsute little prince with 
a good education, an exceptionally enlightened 
mind, and a great admiration for Napoleon. 
Like many other Persians he has made a close 
study of the French Revolution, and like those 
others he mentally tries to adapt to Persia's needs 
the methods and ideals of French democracy. 
When I saw him he had been much perplexed, he 
told me, as to the right attitude to take up in 
face of the political situation created by the pres- 



78 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

ence of British troops there in fighting order on 
Persian soil. He had nothing but praise for the 
behaviour of the Indians, and had spent, he said, 
an enjoyable evening as the guest of the officers. 

On the way back to Birjand, while we were 
crossing a hill at night, I met a small party of 
Persian artillerymen tramping down to Seistan. 
They reported that on the previous night they had 
seen a balloon (no doubt a Zeppelin ! ) passing 
southwards. ' Balloons ' have often been seen by 
star-gazers in this district in the last two months. 
Persians are nothing if not imaginative, and I have 
actually heard a description of a machine which 
alighted near Kain in July. It carried two men, 
who sat in an enclosure of the shape and size of a 
coffin. When they wanted to start again they 
jumped in and turned a wheel, and the machine 
ran along the ground for fifty yards and stopped. 
The pilot got out and operated a sort of wheel 
or handle, and the aeroplane then rose and 
disappeared. 

At Neh I met the deputy-governor, a tall 
countryman with a keen eye. He has an in- 
quiring mind, and wanted to know about all sorts 
of things, such as the possible area of operation 
of a submarine, the height of the earth's atmo- 
sphere, and the nature of clouds. There also I 
had a long talk, much on the same lines, with a 
lonely young prince who acts as telegraph operator 
and receives a salary of about forty-five pounds 
a year. The Shahs had many wives in the old 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 79 

days, as you may have heard. As a consequence 
kings' sons are plentiful in Persia. 

BiRJAND, 10^^ October 1915. 

Dear M., — We have been out hawking with the 
Amir, so as it was my first experience, and as 
hawking is an old British sport, I must tell you 
all about it. The Amir had sent for his hawks a 
month ago, and had recently promised to arrange 
a day for us. The expected invitation came on 
Sunday, in his bold handwriting, which is full of 
character, but just a little difficult to read till you 
are accustomed to it. Here is a translation of 
the letter. The original is written with a reed 
pen from right to left, without punctuation, on a 
folded sheet of cheap European writing paper, 
and commences with the date, 22nd Zi Qa'deh, 
alongside which is the Arabic ' ya hu,' which is 
an invocation to the Deity : 

■' May I be thy sacrifice, 

* It is hoped that the august constitution of your 
excellency is in the perfection of health and well-being. 
I shall be much obliged and thankful if the day after 
to-morrow, Tuesday the 24th Zi Qa'deh, at three hours 
after midday, you will bring honour to the bondsman's 
residence so that we may go in company for a little 
hawking. Also, if for the partaking of dinner with your 
sincere friend you will maintain honour so that the time 
for bridge play may be prolonged, it will be an increase of 
obligation. Beyond this there is no trouble. 
'The Sincere Friend, 

•'Muhammad Ibrahim.' 



80 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

To this I replied : 

*May I be thy sacrifice, 

* At the news of the well-being of the existence of 
the most noble high chief, I became exceedingly 
gladdened. In accordance with the command of the 
high chief, on Tuesday at the hour appointed, with the 
perfection of disposition and distinction, I shall attain 
to honour. 

*The Veritable Friend, 

' F. H.' 

And I addressed the envelope : 

' (In) the blessed presence of the most glorious, most 
honourable, most bountiful, most praised, most high 
chief. Amir Shoukat ul Mulk, governor of the Qayinat 
and Seistan (may his glory endure) let it be honoured.' 

At a quarter to three on Tuesday I started out, 
and arrived at three o'clock in the Amir's garden, 
where the autumn tints were beginning to show 
on the fruit trees. I found the Amir sitting with 
X. and the prince, and very shortly afterwards 
we all mounted and moved off up the gravelly 
track towards the foothills a mile or two south. 
Our servants rode behind, and as the Amir had 
about a dozen men in his following we made quite 
a cavalcade. A boy of sixteen walked by the 
Amir's bridle, and alongside tramped two old men 
bearing each a hawk on his right wrist. 

On the way we discussed the latest news of the 
war, and after half an hour's ride we reached the 
foothills at the chosen spot and began a series of 
short climbs and descents. Within ten minutes 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 81 

a covey of see-see, the little partridge that fre- 
quents these bare hills, rose with a whistle and 
disappeared round a bend. We dismounted and 
advanced, the falconers leading with the bright- 
eyed hawks held on their gloved hands by a 
slender thong attached to a leg-ring. The hawks 
had at no time been hooded : they were now 
straining for their release, which came shortly. 
The see-see rose again twenty yards ahead of us, 
the falconers raised their hands and let go, and 
the hawks simultaneously rose and pursued in 
different directions. One of them disappeared 
and pinned its quarry a hundred yards away. 
The other went straight ahead of us, lost or 
overshot its mark, and alighted on a jutting rock 
that overlooked the ' field.' The Amir's men 
came up and commenced to search the ground 
for the crouching partridge, while the hawk 
watched the proceedings from fifty yards' dis- 
tance. After a minute or two a couple of birds 
were put up again, and a lightning chase followed, 
which ended a hundred yards off. The falconer 
ran up and took the quarry, bringing the hawk 
back. We again went forward, and in a short 
time put up another covey. This time the hawk 
pursued unerringly. Its victim skimmed along a 
few yards above the ground, seeking cover, till 
it was brought to earth. When I arrived on the 
scene the hawk was poised on its quarry with its 
claws gripping behind the neck, and had begun 



82 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

to pluck the feathers from the back of the silent 
wide-eyed and motionless partridge. The fal- 
coner came up, took the neck and back of the 
itill-living partridge in his left hand and its legs 
in his right, and with one pull dismembered the 
body. He then presented the legs, which had 
brought away the greater part of the bird's flesh, 
to the waiting hawk. When this gruesome busi- 
ness was over I felt little inclination to see the 
process repeated. The hawk had received his 
meal, however, and the royal and ancient sport 
was ended for the day. Thereafter we took guns 
and walked up a valley on the chance of some 
shooting. Fortune didn't favour us, and event- 
ually we mounted our waiting horses and rode 
back to the governor's residence, where we arrived 
about sunset. 

Tea was brought, and we had an animated 
conversation, with much joking and laughter, 
every one being in high feather with the success 
of the afternoon. When tea and cake was over 
we sipped tumblers of sweet fruit- sherbet, and 
the Amir retired for the evening prayer. He is 
very punctilious in such matters, and sets his 
people an admirable example of unobtrusive 
but steadfast observance, which atones in the 
eyes of the muUas for such venial errors as card- 
playing with foreigners. When he returned we 
settled down to a quiet game with nominal points, 
and the time went quickly till dinner was called 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 88 

for, and we passed into the dining-room. There 
we stood at a little table and demolished a variety 
of hors d'ceuvres — pate de foie gras and sardines 
and lobster, morsels of meat roasted on spits, and 
radishes and bread and butter. When we had 
* whetted our appetites ' we sat down to dinner 
at a rectangular table in the middle of the long 
room, which has no other furniture but the cane- 
bottomed chairs we sat on, and the great carpet 
on the floor, and the English lace curtains on the 
windows. Our host has two cooks, one of whom 
is skilled in European dishes, and the only Persian 
course we were offered was a big dish piled with 
cunningly- prepared rice flavoured with saffron, 
and accompanied by a dish of lumps of bony 
meat with tiny pickled limes and another dish of 
chopped meat stewed with lentils and spinach 
and such things. The wines of France were 
brought round, and there was little to remind us 
that we were not in Western Europe, unless it 
were the neat black pill-box hats which set off the 
clear-cut features and imaginative forehead of our 
host and the trim moustaches and rosy com- 
plexion of the well-groomed prince who faced him 
at the other end of the table. 

I am reminded of the absence of women on 
these occasions by the appearance of the two 
brummagem china flower- stands of European 
manufacture, which are filled with flowers tightly 
packed in a mass of indiscriminate bloom that 



84 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

would make your fingers twitch and your brows 
pucker. The utter lack of art shown by the 
Persian in such matters is the more astonishing 
when one considers the beauty of the rugs and 
carpets made by some of the Kerman weavers, 
beauty of form and colour which expresses the 
national grace and elegance to a degree unequalled 
in the world. The artists who can create the 
design and colour-scheme for such products are 
exceptionally gifted, but the ordinary output of 
Persian looms is not wanting in taste and origin- 
ality. The worst specimens perhaps are ex- 
emplified by the little rugs woven in thousands 
by the women and children of the tent-dwelling 
tribes of this district. Most of these rugs are 
frankly crude and unlovely, though a few of 
them are a delight to the eye. The demand for 
such things in America and Europe is difficult to 
account for. The tribes are untaught, of course, 
and proper guidance would work wonders. The 
one idea that is instinctive with these people is 
that of symmetry. The larger rugs are woven 
in pairs exactly alike, and a pair of these always 
lies symmetrically at the far end of a reception 
room. It is very difficult to teach a house 
servant that chairs should not be placed in prim 
rows along the walls of a sitting-room, but perhaps 
that is due to native custom, which demands 
that guests should be mustered in such a fashion— 
the bigwigs at the top of the room and the small 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 85 

fry nearest the door, the centre of the room being 
empty and the squatted guests forming two Hnes 
down the sides. By this arrangement twenty 
people can be conveniently seated in a room of 
ordinary size, which is certainly economical. 

During dinner a gramophone was played in the 
passage outside, and in the intervals of British, 
American, Indian, and Persian records we talked. 
The Amir is not a ready conversationalist, and has 
not the gift of sustaining small talk. But when 
one can manage to raise a subject that interests 
him and admits of discussion, he will readily 
respond, and then he speaks freely, rationally, 
and with some eloquence. On one occasion when 
we were a party of eight, a new arrival, a young 
Persian with an earnest mind and a ponderous 
manner, was edifying us with a discourse on the 
immorality of war in general, and the necessity 
for its abolishment ethically considered, and the 
sure prospects of perpetual and world-wide peace 
that lay at most a matter of centuries ahead. 
Protests were made, heads were shaken in dis- 
agreement, and a mild argument followed. An 
Englishman evoked natural law and appealed to 
the past, challenging his protagonist to prophesy 
against the whole teaching of history and experi- 
ence. The peace-lover, who had been educated in 
Europe, persisted in his views and kept the ball 
rolling till our host was referred to. The Amir 
smiled. ' What can I say ? ' he asked, bending 



86 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

a little forward and fixing his dark eyes on a dish 
of grapes. ' It would be a fine thing certainly if 
war was to cease, but I can't dare to expect it. 
As So-and-so said just now, when you speak of war 
you mean blood-spilling on a battlefield, which is 
only one kind of war. There are innumerable 
other kinds, of which trade competition is one, 
and if we consider a state of humanity where all 
rivalry and jealousy and emulation are done away 
with, we must imagine a sort of living creature the 
like of which is not to be seen in the whole world 
of nature. Natural perfection as we see it in 
plants and the lower animals is only reached by 
the exercise of force. Self-expression is a mani- 
festation of force, and is always directed against 
some form of resistance. Here are eight of us 
engaged in a discussion, for instance, and as there 
are two sides to the discussion we have a battle. 
We may say that any struggle or endeavour, 
down to the simplest motion, is an attempt to 
overcome some form of resistance, and is therefore 
a kind of war, however much it may differ in 
degree. The principle of pressure, whether it 
hurts or wounds or slaughters, is the same. So 
it comes to a question of degree, and how far it is 
necessary to go in a certain line. Yes ? Well, 
if you clean away all evil and crime from the mind 
of man you will have no blood-spilling, and the 
more evil you eliminate, the less blood-spilling 
you will have, I suppose. Also, the more harmony 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 87 

and co-operation against inorganic force, the 
less blood-spilling. But can you eliminate evil 
without eliminating the good also ? Are they not 
relative ideas ? You say that the progress of 
civilisation is improving matters, but if so, then 
the lesser evil of the future will not be judged less, 
because it will contrast with the higher good of 
the future. So, relatively speaking, evil and 
crime and vice will always exist. But you say 
evil can be controlled without bloodshed. I 
suppose it can, when the good controls it; but 
until you can eliminate the possibility of private 
murder by an individual man who is subject to 
law and restraint, how can you eliminate the 
possibility of war by one state on another ? Let 
them submit to arbitration ? Well, when two 
individuals disagree, they have an unlimited 
choice of arbitrators, and also the law and police 
of their government, and yet they often come to 
blows, either from excess of passion or from dis- 
trust of law and arbitration.' The Amir paused, 
and the earnest young man took another mouthful 
of rice. Our host continued with slackened 
speech and in a pensive tone. * In spite of what I 
have just said, I have always had the idea that 
the greater and more civilised a race might be, 
the more peace it would enjoy. But what can we 
Persians think nowadays ? When the mightiest, 
most wealthy and prosperous and intelligent 
powers of Europe, to whom we look for the teach- 



88 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

ings of science and good government, are engaged 
in savage warfare on a scale that we can hardly 
form a conception of ? Bah, bah ! when we 
consider that already the casualties in Europe 
almost equal the whole population of Persia ! ' 

I am afraid I have given you, in parts, the basis 
of his remarks rather than the exact translation 
of them. I remember that he ended with a 
deprecating little laugh, which was like an appeal 
to us to leave the matter at that and to make the 
conversation a little less stodgy. 

BiRJAND, 29th October 1915. 
Dear M., — I think you will have seen a good deal 
about Persia in the newspapers in the last two 
months. The square-heads are coming on, and 
seem to be making very fair headway. Our 
consul in Isfahan having been shot at and 
wounded, the British colony there were forced 
to withdraw in the second week of September, 
and marched across the Bakhtiari mountains to 
Ahwaz, a dreary little place on the banks of the 
Karun where the temperature reaches over 120° 
in the shade. Teheran is now in a state of politi- 
cal turmoil, and anything may happen there. 
The Germans, with Isfahan in their control, are 
sending their emissaries eastwards and south- 
wards in increasing numbers. They dream of 
emulating the deeds of Alexander and repeating 
the history of 327 B.C. by an overland march to 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 89 

India. As this is impracticable for a modern 
army in modern Persia, they are trying to raise 
Afghanistan and Persia itself against us. If they 
can't succeed in embroiling the Persian govern- 
ment they will create local hostility. Persia is a 
suitable country for such a policy, as its means 
of communication are hopelessly slow, and it is 
peopled by very diverse races and tribes, many 
of whom can't be properly controlled from the 
capital. As the agitators are well provided with 
money, they have managed to engage a good many 
mercenaries and to secure desirable adherents. 
* Here am I on Tom Tiddler's ground,' says the 
bold Teuton, ' scattering gold and silver. Gather 
round, brother Mohammedans, and I will fight 
your battles for you.' Whatever the results, 
they have had fair success already, as several 
hundred emissaries from Germany and Austria 
have necessitated the sending of some thousands 
of British and Russian troops to Persia for the 
protection of our interests, when these troops 
might have been profitably employed elsewhere. 

Meanwhile the Indian troops stationed at Bir- 
jand have their spirits kept up by alarms and 
excursions which lead to nothing, but give them 
something to talk about. The officers spend a 
part of their spare time wandering about the 
bazaars or buying rugs. The rugs are brought 
to the mess and spread out for examination. 
The buyers are almost experts by now, and at 



90 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

the sight of a crude article their underhps pro- 
trude and the broker is waved away. If a good 
pair is offered, the eye beams, an interpreter is 
summoned, pubhc opinion is invited, and a long 
discussion follows, which passes the time pleas- 
antly till lunch is ready. Carpets, in short, have 
taken the place that polo ponies occupy in the 
mind of a cavalry subaltern in India. You 
mustn't imagine, of course, that the officers do 
no work. They do a great deal, and most of it 
is uninteresting and not in the least exciting. 
Their local routine, however, is varied by patrol 
work on the north road up to Sihdeh, where, in 
the course of looking for German adventurers, 
they keep an eye open for the possibilities of 
shikar. Not having been blessed with a glimpse 
of an enemy so far, they are beginning to think 
that hunting for Germans in this part of the 
world is like fishing for salmon in the Thames at 
Windsor. Impatience, after all, is one of the 
soldier's noble vices. They remind themselves on 
these little expeditions of the children's rhyme — 

' The noble Duke of York, 
He had ten thousand men ; 
He marched them down to London town. 
And he marched them back again.' 

or words to that effect. 

Meanwhile, they have attracted the notice of 
certain newspaper editors in Teheran, who, with 
their pockets bulging and their heads in a perspira- 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 91 

tion, have been concocting (after Poe) a few ' Tales 
of the Arabesque and Grotesque ' and ' Tales of 
Mystery and Imagination ' based on the tyranny 
and misdeeds of the British and Russian troops 
in Eastern Persia. The Persians in Birjand, of 
course, estimate these fictions at their proper 
value, particularly as the Amir himself has also 
been a subject for abuse. The Birjandi is 
sensible enough to recognise that in wartime, 
when the troops of a neighbouring power are 
brought in to oust belligerents of hostile intent, 
they must expect the movements of wayfarers 
to be rather carefully watched and questioned. 
But they do not construe this into ' torture.' 

As for the Amir, his position is quite clear. He 
tells us frankly, over a cup of tea or a rubber of 
bridge, that he is a loyal servant of his govern- 
ment, and that if his government were to declare 
war on us he would promptly and cheerfully fight 
us. If, on the other hand, his government de- 
clared against our enemies, he would equally 
promptly and cheerfully fight for us — in which 
case, he adds privately with a smiling outburst 
of national pride, our troops might return to 
India and he would do their work for them with 
much greater ease and effectiveness. 

As to which we naturally offer no opinion. 



92 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

BiRJAND, 30th November 1915. 

Dear M., — Many things have happened since 
I wrote you a month ago, and much diplomatic 
history has been made in the Middle East. Poor 
Persia, who contracted an attack of Teutonitis 
in the summer, took to her bed in September with 
a severe headache and a rising temperature. The 
disease developed steadily and affected her vital 
organs, and specialists from the chief capitals of 
Europe were brought to her bedside. ' A con- 
tagious disease,' they said. ' She has caught it 
from her neighbour the Turk, who should not 
have been allowed to visit her. We must keep 
it from reaching her other neighbours.' So they 
put their heads together and discussed and agreed 
and disagreed and wrote little prescriptions and 
ordered a change of diet. And they went on 
writing prescriptions and giving advice, and the 
patient went on getting worse because her children 
thought they knew better than the doctors and 
gave her indigestible things to eat. The crisis 
came in the second week of November, when her 
temperature rose to danger point, and her children 
went off to prepare her funeral and to divide up 
her property in anticipation. The Russian doctor, 
however, had ordered some ice from the north, 
and luckily the ice arrived just in time and was 
applied to her burning brow. A few hours of 
anxiety followed, but at last her brain cooled 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 98 

and the fever subsided. The specialists looked 
at each other and nodded, and one of them went 
softly to the door and opened it gently and whis- 
pered to the children waiting outside. ' It is all 
right. The Shah will not leave Teheran.' But 
no one heard him, for the children had all gone 
off to Qum and were busy playing with the rifles 
and guns and bombs and money-bags which their 
kind uncle, the Kaiser, had just sent them. 

By the middle of November all fear for the 
capital was over. The Shah proclaimed his 
friendship for his neighbours, and a new cabinet 
was formed. The advocates of war, however, had 
already committed themselves, and in the pro- 
vinces the sparks began to fly. Isfahan became 
a war centre, and the enemy advanced in force 
from Kermanshah in the west. On the 23rd I 
heard that the consul and other British subjects 
in Shiraz had been arrested. On the 25th I 
heard that all our people had left Hamadan for 
Kazvin, and on the 27th came the news that the 
bank in Sultanabad had been looted. A merry 
week indeed, and we are wondering what will 
come next. 

And what about sleepy little Birjand all this 
time ? Well, on a certain afternoon when the 
crisis was just nearing its worst, an express tele- 
gram came through from Teheran which put the 
situation in about ten words. We discussed it 
together, and our imaginations dwelt lovingly on 



94 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

its ridiculous but stimulating possibilities. I 
reminded X. that we were due to dine that 
night with the Amir. ' You will go, of course ? ' 
* Certainly,' said X. * I wrote an acceptance this 
morning, and so did you, I suppose.' 'Do you 
think he knows what is in the air at Teheran ? ' 
' Possible,' said X., ' but I really don't expect he 
does.' So we went. Riding out to the Amir's 

garden just before sunset I overtook Captain 

humping along on a camel. ' Hullo,' he said, 
' what do you think of the news ? ' ' Very inter- 
esting,' I replied, 'but don't take it too seriously 
or you may have another reaction. It 's prob- 
ably a false alarm, like the ones you 've been so 
disgusted about lately.' There was a pause, and 
we continued at a walking pace. ' It would be 

rather funny,' said Captain , ' if after dinner 

we were suddenly invited to stop the night.' ' It 
would,' said I ; ' just what I was thinking my- 
self.' In due course we arrived and found the 
young Persian colonel of cavalry with the Amir. 
The pleasure of shaking hands with our host was 
heightened by the piquant reflection that this 
might possibly be the last meeting at which we 
would all be in a state of freedom. We drank 
the usual round of tea with the usual small talk, 
and when shortly afterwards we settled to bridge, 
the sinister potentialities of the situation were 
forgotten. When dinner was over we had some 
boisterous demonstrations of skill and agility, in 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 95 

which the Persian colonel took a distinguished 
part. The Amir himself showed the suppleness 
of his joints by jumping over a walking-stick held 
in both hands, and picking up pins from the 
carpet with his mouth while he held the stick 
below his knees. After a jolly half -hour of pure 
boyishness we sobered down to bridge again. At 
midnight we left. Not a word of politics, nor the 
least hint of electricity in the atmosphere. 

A week or so later I met Captain looking 

like a man who has missed his train at a wayside 
station and has to wait ten hours for the next one. 

* What did you do this morning ? ' he asked. 

* What have you been doing this afternoon ? 
What are you going to do this evening ? Has 
anything ever happened in Birjand ? I 'm per- 
fectly certain nothing ever will happen, pleasant 
or unpleasant. I can't imagine why we came to 
this awful place. How do you manage to exist ? ' 
I felt his pulse gravely, and prescribed. ' Five 
grains of aspirin, or three sets of tennis with the 
odds heavily against you. And stop thinking 
about the Quetta Club.' 

Meanwhile we are watching with great in- 
terest the doings of a certain little force that is 
pushing its way valiantly up the long Tigris river 
towards Baghdad. If Baghdad is taken, the G. 
buccaneers in Persia will have to run away home 
by a different road to the one they came by. 
But it seems rather a lot to expect. 



96 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

BiRJAND, 3rd January 1916. 
Dear M., — Your letters of 3rd September and 
14th November arrived together last mail. I 
haven't had one from P. R. for a long time, but 
I expect he is tired of getting fiery epistles from 
me when his battalion is still marking time in 
England. When I write him I always imagine 
him to be in France or in hospital, and I suppose 
that sort of letter hardly relieves the burden of 
parades and route marches at home. I had a 
letter ten days ago from Mrs. D., in which she 
congratulated me on being in a country like 
Persia, ' which is so far away from the war, and 
where no one is likely to be disturbed.' That was 
just as much as I could bear, so I hope you will 
give the old lady a harrowing picture of things as 
they are in the Wild East when next you meet her. 
The Russians occupy the north and are in touch 
with the enemy at Hamadan in the west and on 
the road to Isfahan in the centre. The British 
bank's branches have been going down like nine- 
pins, and the whole of the west, centre, and south 
of Persia seems to be under the control of Germans, 
Austrians, and Turks, with a following of rebel 
Persian gendarmerie under Swedish officers, and 
with a general riff-raff of mercenary menials and 
warrior hillmen at their backs. The British 
colony in Yezd was finally relieved of its responsi- 
bilities and its cash about three weeks ago, and left 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 97 

to find its own way to safety. At the same time, the 
colony in Kerman, having seen enough of German 
aggressiveness and Persian indifference or weak- 
ness in the last few months, decided to evacuate 
and make for Bundar Abbas on the Gulf Coast. 
The next places on the map in this victorious 
eastward march of the enemy are, of course, 
Birjand and Seistan, so you can work on your 
imagination for the benefit of Mrs. D. You might 
tell her, for instance, that we sleep in our clothes 
every night with revolvers beside us and the doors 
barricaded, — that we never venture out — ^that our 
houses are surrounded by wire entanglements, 
and that those who hadn't a cellar on their pre- 
mises before have now got the latest type of 
dug-out. As a matter of fact, however, we are 
living absolutely as usual. 

We had a full house on New Year's Eve at the 
vice-consulate, which is also the mess quarters. 
There were fourteen of us at dinner, half the 
number being Persian officials. The governor 

sat on the right of Colonel , and on his left was 

the newly-appointed revenue collector, a sensible 
and industrious little man of middle age, with a 
practical mind, a businesslike manner, and a 
sense of humour. One of the other officials was 
unable to be present, but his place was filled by a 
minor dignitary, who on discovering that he was 
not to receive an invitation had begged for one. 
The colonel, who has been learning Persian but 



98 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

is much too English ever to be able to speak it 
properly, kept his end of the table going with 
anecdotes and stories for children, the most 
amusing part of which, as he well knew, was the 
Anglo- Indo- Persian idiom in which they were 
given. The colonel has acquired a reputation 
for this form of entertainment. In the middle 
of dinner he adjusted his glasses and addressed 
me with a smile of anticipation. ' I want to tell 
them the story of the Bees and the Snail. Now 
what is the Persian for a snail ? ' I was floored, 
of course, never having seen one in the country ; 
so I appealed to the revenue collector and asked 
him what was an escargot in Persian. The con- 
versation round the table stopped, and all eyes 
were directed on him while his reply was anxiously 
awaited. Satisfaction was not to be had, however, 
and he in turn referred the momentous question 
to the governor, describing the creature by cir- 
cumlocutions. The colonel here called for paper 
and a pencil, and drew a careful sketch of a snail 
rampant, which he handed to the governor. The 
Amir suggested a name, and referred the question 
to one of the table servants, who suggested 
another name. The subject was taken up gener- 
ally, and the sketch was criticised. The paper was 
passed round the table and covered with snails by 
various people, and was then returned to the 
colonel, who was still smiling sweetly. ' Once 
upon a time,' he began, ' there was a horned 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 99 

dragon two inches long with its house on its back.' 
The initial difficulty being at last overcome, he 
got through the story with much success. 

After dinner a bridge four was started, and 

Major drew partners with an I.A.R. cavalry 

officer against the governor and the prince. The 
deal fell to the prince, who called two royal 
spades. ' Three hearts,' said the I.A.R.O. ' No,' 
said the Amir. 'Three no trumps,' said the 
major, calling over his partner. ' Dub-bel,' said 
the prince. ' Four hearts,' said the I.A.R.O., who 
is an old rugby forward. ' Dabel,' said the Amir. 

' Four no trumps,' said Major , who is an 

officer to command respect. ' Dub-bel,' said the 
prince in a bored voice. The I.A.R.O. having 
called three hearts and been twice overcalled by 
his own partner, considered his hand again and 
tightened his mouth. His eye gleamed fire, and 
he suddenly showed a double chin which hadn't 
been there before. ' Five hearts,' he said, hold- 
ing eight minus the ace and king. The governor 
doubled joyfully. The major drew back his neck, 
which had a blush all over it. He made a little 
cough and puffed furiously at his cigar. His hand 
held three aces and the king of spades — all super- 
dreadnoughts, with a fleet of destroyer hearts in 
his partner's hand and the king third in his own. 
Certainly he must conduct this battle himself. 

These younger men . ' Five no trumps.' The 

prince doubled and began to reckon up his 



100 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

winnings. The others passed, and the major, 
committed to death or victory, redoubled. The 
I.A.R.O. gave up the struggle, put down the 
dummy hand with an air of aggrieved rectitude, 
and relit his pipe. The governor held the ace of 
hearts second, and the major lost one trick. I had 
better not repeat the interesting but rather long 
discussion that followed. Enough to say that 
we had a merry evening and saw the New Year 
in with the traditional honours. 

BiRjAND, 17th March 1916. 

Dear M., — King Charles has lost his head, and 
the Roundhead sits in his place — by which you 
are to understand that the Amir Shoukat ul Mulk 
has been dismissed and ordered to Teheran, and 
that his nephew and rival, the Amir Hisam ud 
Douleh, is now governor in Birjand. It is a sad 
business and rather a long story, but as it may 
suggest to you a few ideas about Persian politics, 
I may as well give you the local history of the past 
two months. The case is of general interest for 
two reasons. The first is that the Amirs of Kain 
are among the few remaining hereditary governors 
in Persia, and they are perhaps the only instance 
of a family, without royal blood and with no tribal 
chieftainship, retaining through many generations, 
by wealth and local influence, their administra- 
tive powers over a considerable district. The 
second reason is that Birjand, their present seat 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 101 

of government, being midway on the route from 
Russia through Khurasan to India, has in the 
past frequently been a scene of rivalry and covert 
contention for influence between the representa- 
tives of England and Russia : the town itself was 
allocated in 1907 by the two powers as being 
within the British sphere of influence, of which 
it marked the north-eastern limit. This rivalry, 
though hushed by the greater business of the war, 
continues even now on friendly lines as between 
Khurasan and Seistan, or between Petrograd and 
Simla. 

To keep his position, in the altered state of 
Persia, the governor of Kain has to maintain his 
authority and popularity with the people, to act 
in concert with the views of England and Russia, 
and to placate the court at Teheran. As the 
Shoukat ul Mulk is by a long way the biggest 
landowner in the Kain district, it is easy for a 
man of his attractive personality to command 
obedience and popularity. The local people are 
as pacific and amenable as any in Persia, and 
hereditary loyalty is a strong factor of his power. 
The Hisam ud Douleh, who is of ruder blood on 
the distaft jide, could rival him only in action and 
forcefulness, and has less personal distinction. 
To either of the family it was easy to satisfy the 
Shah and his ministers with the gifts that circum- 
stances required from time to time. The only 
difficulty, therefore, for the Shoukat ul Mulk was 



102 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

to hold the favour of the foreign representatives. 
Being, in addition to his other agreeable qualities, 
a master of finesse, he succeeded in preserving the 
friendliest relations with the British, whose good 
offices had already secured him in his appoint- 
ment against the claims and intrigues of his 
elder brother, the present Hisam ud Douleh's 
father. 

His relations with the Russians have always 
been less cordial. Apart from the question of 
personality, the policy of Russia in Persia is too 
aggressive for his liking. While it is in the British 
interest to keep Persia standing on her own legs, 
the Russians, by mere geographical contiguity to 
the richest provipices of a feeble and degenerate 
power, are almost in the nature of things drawn 
into a policy of encroachment. A local ruler with 
a sense of independence, jealous of his honour and 
dignity and loyal to his throne, will therefore 
prefer to shake hands with Britain rather than 
rub shoulders with Russia. Apprehension, in a 
man of character, breeds dislike, and dislike 
breeds hostility. The Shoukat ul Mulk disliked 
Russia, though his feelings went no further. As 
a consequence, his rival, the Hisam ud Douleh, 
became a Russian protege, and looked mainly to 
Russia for diplomatic support. The Hisam ud 
Douleh was, moreover, in disfavour with the 
British, having been dismissed from Seistan, partly 
at their instance, on a charge of tacit encourage- 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 103 

ment to the Baluch tribes who raided southern 
Kain four years ago. 

Matters stood Hke that in 1914, when the rival 
interests of Britain and Russia were suddenly 
united for the war, much to the annoyance of 
those Persians who had enjoyed knocking their 
heads together. As the war dragged on and it 
was seen that our joint prognostications of early 
victory were not realised, and that Germany 
retained her conquests, the influence of this third 
power, aided by that of Turkey, became an in- 
creasingly important factor in the situation. 
During the last six months of 1915, the Shoukat 
ul Mulk watched the progress of German activities 
in central and southern Persia. The steady 
advance of their propagandists and armed forces 
towards his district impressed him, and he be- 
came doubtful of the issue. Unable to foresee 
with certainty the results of the war in Europe as 
affecting the local power in Persia of Britain and 
Russia, he adopted a policy of extreme circum- 
spection and directed his efforts to the avoidance 
of offence to either side. He attached no import- 
ance to the German violation of Persian neutrality, 
which he considered had been already violated by 
the presence of Russian troops in the north-west. 
His satellites in Birjand, in love with the fair 
promises of Germany and full of feminine admira- 
tion of Germany's achievements, urged him to 
definite secret support of our enemies. He took 



104 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

his stand, however, on imphcit obedience to the 
orders of his own government in Teheran. 

The orders ultimately received by him in 
December and January were to support us in all 
friendliness and to put down hostile agitation. 
Even these mild instructions he privately re- 
garded as wrung from a cabinet overawed by the 
presence of large Russian troops. ' I cannot 
construe this sort of thing,' he said, ' as a definite 
order to oppose the progress of armed Germans. 
The cabinet are afraid to assume the responsi- 
bility of issuing such an order. How can they 
expect me, their servant, to assume the greater 
responsibility of hostile action without definite 
instructions ? ' The orders, however, clearly di- 
rected him to discountenance German activities 
among the people of the district, and this was 
never done. 

The situation grew more tense, and the Shoukat 
ul Mulk was definitely warned that unless proof 
of his friendship was forthcoming he would lose 
his position. ' I can understand that,' he replied. 
* It is difficult for the cabinet to authorise open 
hostility to German parties, but it is an easy 
matter for them to dismiss one governor and 
appoint another. They will oblige you in that 
respect with the greatest pleasure ! ' He fully 
realised that his nephew, the Hisam ud Douleh, 
who had been all this time in Teheran, was an 
eager candidate for his government, was being 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 105 

actively supported by the Russians, and was no 
longer under a cloud with the British. 

As a matter of fact, the Hisam ud Douleh left 
Teheran about this time and arrived in Meshed. 
In February the Shoukat ul Mulk received a tele- 
gram from Teheran instructing him to proceed to 
Meshed 'to discuss with the governor-general 
certain matters of revenue.' Shortly afterwards 
he received sanction to go direct to Teheran, and 
on the 27th of February he left Birjand, accom- 
panied by the majority of his satellites and follow- 
ers. A few days before his departure a telegram 
was received by the revenue collector and the agent 
for foreign affairs from the Hisam ud Douleh, 
directing them to assume control pending his 
arrival. These two officials commenced to act 
without waiting till the Shoukat ul Mulk had left 
the town, and amongst other things a retainer of 
the dismissed governor was engaged by them. 
The angry Amir sent for the revenue collector and 
gave him a severe rating, and the servant in 
question, who was a son of the former chief of 
police, was likewise sent for, and was given a sound 
whipping as a lesson in fealty and good manners. 

On the day of the Amir's departure the soldiers 
were drawn up in line at a point of his route just 
outside the to^^ii, and there a crowd assembled. 
Across the roadway at this point a string was 
stretched, attached to an upheld pole on either 
side of the road. In the middle of the string a 



106 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

copy of the Koran was suspended, and the Amir 
kissed the book as his carriage passed under it, 
many of his followers doing likewise. About the 
same time the Hisam ud Douleh left Meshed for 
Birjand, and the two Amirs, uncle and nephew, 
who had not seen each other for some years, 
passed on the road within a few miles of each 
other without meeting or exchanging messages. 

On the 12th of this month the Amir Hisam ud 
Douleh arrived in Birjand, and was welcomed by 
a much larger crowd than had witnessed the 
Shoukat ul Mulk's departure. We called on him 
the following day, and he made many protesta- 
tions of friendship, which were repeated when he 
returned the calls. He spoke to me of what he 
had heard as to the Shoukat ul Mulk's friendship. 
' They much indication of kindness with the slave 
had,' I replied. ' No doubt your Excellency in 
the same way will make command.' We smiled 
gravely, and he remarked that the Shoukat ul 
Mulk (who is thirty-four and about the same age 
as himself) was ' a good lad ' — an expression 
which amused me by its studied detachment. 

Well, King Charles, with his Gallic grace and 
esprit, his bel air and princely manners, has left 
us, and here we are exchanging compliments with 
Cromwell, who is of average height, stout and 
round-headed, and has weak eyes and a soft voice 
and manner, and a facile flow of speech. X. has 
asked for leave, and I am trying to get away too. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 107 

I haven't much hope though, and neither has X., 
though he hasn't been home for seventeen years. 
As for the officers of our Indian troops, they have 
wanted to leave Persia from the day they arrived. 
But they Uke the new governor because he is 
amiable and talkative. ' The other fellow was a 
bit lordly,' and they didn't altogether trust him. 
' Never quite knew where you were with the 
Shoukat ! ' Even they, however, regret King 
Charles and his tennis and bridge parties, and 
his ' jolly little dinners.' 

As for the people of Birjand, their small arms 
don't count for much when the big guns are 
booming. We rather expected a hostile demon- 
stration, but no such thing happened. Only 
the active partisans of the Shoukat ul Mulk 
are apprehensive, and many of their number 
went away in his train. The soldiers received a 
donative, and are pleased for the moment. The 
whole of the ex-governor's staff is now out of 
office, and the Hisam ud Douleh will have to 
find a new set of officials for the town and district. 
This wholesale change of personnel always takes 
place when a provincial governor is dismissed, 
and the result is delay and expense and incom- 
petence and intrigue for some time afterwards — 
between the new set, who are ignorant of local 
affairs and routine, and the old set, who are out 
of employment and feel it their duty and pleasure 
to be obstructive. 



108 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Meanwhile, the poHtical situation in western 
Persia has changed for the better. Our friends 
were back in Hamadan in the beginning of 
January, and in Sultanabad towards the end 
of February — ^thanks to the Russians, who have 
now gone further and driven the enemy out of 
Kermanshah. The Germans and Austrians and 
Turks in central Persia have thus had their line 
of supply and retreat cut off, and we may expect 
to hear of their scuttling out of Kerman and 
Yezd very shortly. In the altered state of things 
the Hisam ud Douleh will have no temptation to 
go against us or even to beat about the bush dis- 
creetly as his predecessor was accused of doing — 
all of which seems rather bad luck for King Charles. 

BiRjAND, 2nd May 1916. 

Dear M.,— The days are very dull at present, 
and my idle afternoons are very long, so to pass 
the time I have been delving into Persian romance, 
which my housemaid reads to me regularly after 
lunch. My housemaid is a gamin of fifteen, with 
a pale face, a bright eye, and a brighter intelli- 
gence. His father was ruined by opium-smoking, 
and his brothers are opium- smokers. He him- 
self has taken to cigarettes, which he puffs 
surreptitiously. I remember the joy of those 
illicit puffs at the same age or a little earlier. 
I remember also the lectures that didn't impress 
me very much. So I lectured Hassan one evening 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 109 

on the evils of smoking at his age, and in the 
middle of my remarks, when I paused to light a 
cheroot, the head flew off my match and singed 
the sleeve of my coat. ' There,' I said, ' you have 
an example of the evils of smoking.' But I 'm 
afraid the example was lost on him, and I think 
that if I were to keep count of my cigarettes I 
should find two or three missing daily. Hassan 
is a good lad, and works well. It is pleasanter 
for me to develop his reading powers than to 
strengthen my own, and we get along faster that 
way, though he needs help over a strange word 
occasionally. Persian books have no punctua- 
tion whatever, which makes matters difficult : 
also the word ' but,' for instance, would be written 
simply ' bt ' in Persian, which might mean ' bat ' or 
'bit.' With Hassan, however, the difficulty all 
depends on what book he is given to read. 
The only book he himself possessed was a Lives 
of the Saints or Book of Martyrs, the sort of thing 
our Puritan forefathers revelled in. 

I tried him first of all with the Lights of Canopus, 
which is rather like Msop's Fables on a big scale. 
It is a very wordy and long-winded book, full of 
wise saws expressed in ornate and artificial lan- 
guage, and the reader had to struggle so painfully 
over the verbal obstacles that the matter of the 
anecdotes barely reached his mind. So we gave 
that up, and he brought me a book called Malek 
Arslan, which is a novel of gay and wonderful 



110 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

adventure. This he simply raced through as 
quickly as he could find breath. It was full of 
magicians and 3 inns and warriors and moon-faced 
princesses and astonishing deeds of derring-do 
performed by the matchless young hero. It had 
no difficulties for Hassan, who had already listened 
to its tale of marvels and would have liked to read 
it over again when we had come to the end. 
After that I gave him a copy of the Iskandar 
Nameh, and again we opened the doo*rs of 
Romance for an hour daily. When I call for 
Hassan he washes his hands (a very necessary 
operation), puts his coat on, kicks off his shoes 
at the door of my room, and stands to attention 
with the big book on the table before him. At 
the word of command he begins where he left off 
the day before — sometimes in the middle of a 
sentence. He reads in a loud clear voice, and has 
learned to use natural emphasis and variation of 
tone, whereas the ordinary schoolboy reels off a 
book in mechanical fashion. As his voice is at the 
breaking stage, it wolfs every now and then like a 
badly played violin. 

The Iskandar Nameh is the story of the achieve- 
ments of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who 
died nearly a thousand years before the birth 
of the Mohammedan religion. ' By a convenient 
anachronism this peerless prince. Lord of the East 
and of the West, is described as a true Moham- 
medan, who went about to give battle to heathen 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 111 

rulers, putting them to the sword and kiUing or 
converting them. His doughty warriors and 
princehngs engage in numberless single combats 
with giants and sorcerers on horses, elephants, 
or dragons. Many an idolatrous chief, waving a 
sword three tons in weight, mocks at the heroes 
who dare to match their puny powers with his. 
The fight sometimes lasts for days, in which case 
the combatants retire at sunset to refresh their 
horses and themselves. The drums of war beat 
in the rival camps, and at sunrise the contest is 
renewed. Throughout the book the clash of steel 
rarely ceases except to introduce as comic relief 
the escapades of vassal imps who visit the enemy 
king in disguise, drug him to sleep, release his 
captives, and clip his beard, or perform pranks of 
a less innocent nature, to his annoyance and hurt. 
The challenges and vauntings of the combatants, 
and the battle phrases of the narrative, have 
a profane suggestion of the blood-stirring old 
English of Malory, but the book, when all is said 
and done, is too full of lies and licence for the idle 
heads of boys. So after a while I confiscated the 
Iskandar Nameh, and Hassan brought me a copy 
of the Shahnameh in very fair print, which I 
bought for sixteen shillings, promising to present 
it to him when he could read it properly. 

The Shahnameh is the Epic of Kings, the finest 
book in the whole of Persian literature. Like the 
Iliad, it has preserved for us the fabulous and 



112 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

splendid youth of the race, whose kings and heroes 
it enshrines in martial verse. The difference 
between Homer and Firdousi is mainly the 
difference between Pagan and Zoroastrian. The 
Shahnameh was written at the end of the tenth 
century. It begins with the mythological past, 
and carries the epic history of Persia down to the 
Islamic conquest. Its language is pure, noble, 
and of knightly simplicity. Its marching coup- 
lets are themselves like an endless army of mail- 
clad knights with banners waving in the sun. 
They are like Handel's music. The sacred fire 
burns throughout. The praise of famous men 
revives the pristine generous virtue of a god- 
like age, when heroes were of a different stature 
to ours in mind and body — when strength of 
arm and faith, chivalry, courage, and gentleness 
united in the supreme revelation of manhood, in 
the galvanic force and fury of well-found battle. 

You would think that this national epic would 
be read in Persia by all who can read, but it is not 
so. The pious Mohammedan fears to warm his 
heart at the Zoroastrian fire, and the present-day 
Persian prefers erotic verse, with which his un- 
stable and degenerate mind is more in sympathy. 
The Shahnameh is relegated to tribesmen and 
dervishes. The former read it aloud amongst 
themselves in their encampments. The latter 
learn its episodes by heart and recite them in the 
coffee-shops of towns, striding up and down in the 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 113 

midst of the company as their hearts warm to the 
work. 

The language of the Shahnameh contains many 
obsolete words which make it difficult to read 
till one has learned them. The master-baker who 
sold me my copy volunteered to read me a few 
pages, so I sent for him one evening and seated 
him with the book in the presence of two prim 
young Persians, neither of whom could read it at 
all correctly, though one of them was a junior 
schoolmaster. The honest baker was abashed in 
their presence, though he had little reason to be. 
Eventually I got him started. He chose the most 
famous episode of the book, the death of Zohrab 
in single combat with his unknown father, Rustam 
— the sublime tragedy which you have read of in 
Matthew Arnold's verse. My honest baker didn't 
speak the story, he chanted it as the dervish does, 
on a mournful rhythm that was like a sea-swell 
after shipwreck. 

Afterwards I got Hassan to the task, and we 
consulted the glossary together till the lines began 
to flow easily. Poor Hassan ! He is a very 
ordinary kiddy, and the bardic spirit is not his. 
But the heroic youth of Persia often seems to 
linger in the blood of her young, and the ghost of 
the golden age flits before us, sometimes, as he 
reads. 



H 



114 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

BiRJAND, 80th June 191C. 

Dear M., — In the last three weeks our httle 

community has dwindled down to Captain , 

in command of a squadron of Indian cavalry, and 
myself. The colonel of infantry went off to 
Baluchistan a month or two ago amid general 
regrets, and lately two other officers have followed 
him. X., whose presence I never ceased to be 
grateful for in the last two and a half years, has 
left us in the prime of life after a struggle with 
fever. He applied for holiday leave some months 
ago, and was refused on account of the war. His 
death was hard to realise at first, though a sense 
of his absence was forced on us at every turn. He 
was a man who would have found it impossible 
to make an enemy. 

I am cross with the fates for many reasons, and 
my greatest desire is to do like the others, and quit 
Birjand as soon as possible. The place has been 
stripped of its attractiveness, and everything 
grows staler and more uninteresting as time passes. 
When a man begins to lose his illusions about 
Persia it seems better for him to leave the country 
if he can, for when Persia loses its charm there is 
in truth not much left. At present I can see little 
in the place but an arid sun-baked wilderness, — a 
country which is rapidly reaching the last stage 
in the independent history of backward states — 
a spiritless, vain, ignorant, uncivilised, and foolish 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 115 

people with no cohesion and no ambition for 
anything but momentary personal gain. Perhaps, 
you will say, that mood is in itself only another 
illusion and will pass. And you may perhaps 
add that we should keep our eyes on the bright 
side of things these days. Well, let 's be merry, 
or if we can't be merry let us at least be cynical, 
which I suppose is better than grumbling. I will 
tell you what happened last night at the governor's 
dinner on the anniversary of the Shah's corona- 
tion — ^the grandest and most solemn function of 
the Persian year. 

The Hisam ud Douleh, unlike his predecessors, 
lives in town. His residence is built on the usual 
lines of house construction here, consisting of a 
square brick-paved compound with rooms on 
every side and a small shallow tank in the middle. 
On one side is a paved verandah, behind which is 
what is intended for the main reception room. 
Our invitations were for an hour after sunset, to 
partake of ' sherbet and sweetmeats and dinner.' 

At half-past eight, therefore, Captain and I 

arrived on foot attended by half a dozen men. 
The local military band was stationed inside the 
entrance-court, and struck up the British National 
Anthem as we came in. The bandmaster is 
struggling under difficulties at present, as all his 
best instruments belonged to the Shoukat ul Mulk, 
and were taken ^from him and locked up by the 
latter before his departure. From the entrance- 



116 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

court we went along a passage lined with soldiers, 
who presented arms vigorously. Inside we found 
the compound full of servants. We were ushered 
into a sitting-room opposite the big verandah, and 
there we shook hands at the door with the agent 
for foreign affairs, and in the middle of the room 
with the governor himself. The room was well 
set out with European drawing-room furniture, 
and in the centre was a brilliant acetylene lamp 
which fizzed and glared and added consider- 
ably to the already oppressive heat. The other 
guests were already there for the most part. The 
telegraph-master, an old grey-haired man with 
glasses, had a cross-band over his breast signify- 
ing his rank as a colonel. The postmaster had 
a gilt badge on his hat. The Russian military 
doctor was there in uniform, with two Russian 
telegraphists in serge frock-coats, one of these 
telegraphists being a sturdy old greybeard with 
several service medals. The Persian commanders 
of cavalry and artillery were also in uniform. 
The governor was dressed in a dark-blue uniform 
of sorts, with a jewelled belt and a cross-band, 
and with several Persian orders on his breast. 
The karguzar (the agent for foreign affairs) was 
dressed in a black frock-coat and wore a Turkish 
silver medal. This medal attracted notice at a 
similar function last year, when the British consul 
for Seistan and Kain was in Birjand for the sum- 
mer. The karguzar was laughingly quizzed for 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 117 

wearing a Turkish medal in the presence of the 
representatives of powers at war with Turkey. 
He repHed promptly : ' It is very easy to remedy 
the matter. The consul has only to get me a 
British order to place alongside it.' 

We were offered whisky-sodas, rather to our 
surprise, as Birjand is at present suffering from 
one of its periodical famines in this classic British 
drink. We learned afterwards that the governor 
had with great difficulty succeeded in finding one 
bottle. Where he got it or what it cost him I 
have not heard. Shortly afterwards our host, who 
is stout and thick-set and was suffering from the 
heat more than any of us, suggested a move to the 
open air, and we all went into the compound. 

The scene there was as brilliant as the re- 
sources of the town could make it. The whole 
area was floored with carpets, and the four walls, 
twenty feet high all round, were covered with 
carpets totalling thousands of pounds in value. 
In the centre of the draped verandah facing us was 
a galaxy of about a hundred oil lamps arranged in 
tiers. This illumination was flanked on the raised 
verandah by two gramophones, while the band 
had taken up its position in a corner of the com- 
pound. Persian cavalrymen, with drawn swords, 
stood at attention in an outer ring round the com- 
pound, forming a guard of honour. In the middle, 
some distance from the tank, was a long table 
prepared for dinner, with bent- wood chairs placed 



118 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

around. Near this were three small tables with 
various kinds of hors d'oeuvres, to be eaten 
standing before dinner, in the Russian fashion. 
On the edge of the flat roof overhead was an all- 
round line of figures in dim light — mostly white- 
robed women, spectators of the scene below. We 
walked, and stood, and talked, like people at a 
garden-party. One of the gramophones set up an 
English musical comedy song, and immediately 
afterwards the other, not to be outdone, com- 
menced a Persian air. The two went at it gaily, 
and I remarked to the governor that England and 
Persia appeared to be at war. ' Such a thing,' 
he replied piously, ' will never happen, insha'Uah.' 
I asked Captain what he thought of it all. 

' It reminds me,' said he, ' of those places at 
home where you pay tuppence to get in and tup- 
pence more for every side-show.' 

The gramophones stopped, and the band at 
once commenced. The agent for foreign affairs 
sidled up with the air of a conspirator and drew 
one of us aside to discuss the order of toasts. 
Shortly afterwards we found ourselves consuming 
pate de foie gras, lax, and other things at the 
little tables, and when this was over we sat down 
sixteen to dinner, in the places assigned to us by 
name-cards written in Persian. On my left I 
found the Indian sub-assistant surgeon who has 
run our consulate dispensary here for many years. 
Next him was the local Persian doctor, and the 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS lid 

two at once commenced a lively discussion about 
disease. The Persian was promptly warned. 
' Si vous parlez de malades il faut vous s^parer.* 
' Whom are they arranging to kill next ? ' asked 
the governor. Course followed course, till the 
Shah's health was proposed by the British and 
drunk with cheers d. Vanglaise, the band playing 
the Persian National Anthem. A few minutes later 
the agent for foreign affairs, who sat opposite the 
governor, rose and proposed our King-Emperor. 
The band played our National Anthem, and while 
we remained standing the governor turned to his 
neighbour and gravely repeated the toast. I was 
a little surprised, but when we sat down he ex- 
plained. ' The karguzar,' he said, in a voice that 
no one else could hear, ' was rather hasty. It was 
my business to propose the health of the King of 
England. He had no right to do it. He ought 
to be fined.' After an interval the Russian vice- 
consul's interpreter rose and proposed the health 
of the Shah again, on behalf of his chief, who un- 
fortunately had been prevented from coming. 
This time the band, under a misapprehension, 
played the Russian National Anthem instead of 
the Persian — a bad omen for Persia ! The band- 
master apparently discovered his mistake, for he 
sent me a message asking what he was to play for 
the next toast. I told him he had given us the 
wrong tune, but as the Russian National Anthem 
would be the correct one next he had better 



120 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

repeat it. The governor overheard the reply, 
and remarked, sotto voce : ' I know what it is. 
He has been drinking wine. He will have to 
be fined.' I tried to assuage his wrath, and I 
sincerely hope that the bandmaster was not made 
to contribute to the cost of the dinner, as his pay 
doesn't leave much margin for fining. The agent 
for foreign affairs now rose and responded again 
by proposing the health of the Czar. About this 

stage Captain noticed one of our servants, 

who had been requisitioned to wait at table, 
mixing some gin into a bottle of champagne he 
had just opened. The rogue then filled up the 
glasses of the more convivial guests with the 
mixture, no doubt with a desire to enliven the 
entertainment. He prudently avoided ourselves, 
and the victims of his mischief didn't appear to 
notice anything unusual in their glasses. 

Dinner was now over, and the band was play- 
ing a merry dance tune. The old Russian tele- 
graphist with the medals, who is a Caucasian and 
has several sons in the war, began to hum and beat 
the air to the music, which reminded him of his 
native dances. We induced him to take the 
floor, and up he got and off he went at a brisk jig, 
while we all left the table and gathered round. 
We hadn't watched him long before some others 
started. The band was brought alongside and 
struggled manfully with the situation. When 
they were tired the Russian Cossack escort of 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 121 

about ten men were brought forward, formed a 
ring, and sang their lusty songs and danced their 
inimitable gymnastic dances. The only Persian 
who dared to rise to the occasion and to forsake 
convention and formality so far as to dance, was 
the dear, sedate, and circumspect old karguzar, 
who is normally the acme of dignity and decorum. 
He whirled and twisted with the best, and the 
applause increased when he was given a couple 
of lighted candlesticks, with which he performed 
graceful and intricate evolutions in the best 
traditional style. At this point some one drew 
the attention of our host to the fact that the 
telegraph-master was missing. Inquiries were 
made, and it was discovered that the old man 
had discreetly fled to his home. ' He has done 
wrong,' said the governor in an aside, ' he must 
be fined.' Another victim ! It reminded me of 
the terrible queen in Alice in Wonderland. 

We finished up the evening with a Persian 
hymn sung in the European manner by the 
members of the band, many of whom were boys 
of fourteen and upwards. The poor fellows were 
pale and tired-looking, and it would have been 
pleasanter to see them having a hearty meal. 
They got their reward eventually no doubt, but 
it was past one o'clock when we left, after shaking 
hands with our smiling host, and with the kar- 
guzar, who was by this time once more a figure of 
unimpeachable officialdom. 



122 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

BiRJAND, 15th July 1916. 

Dear M.,— I spent last week-end at Aliabad, a 
deserted village of the plains, fifteen miles away to 
the east. The immediate object of my visit was 
exercise and a change of surroundings, and the 
pretext was provided by the gazelle that frequent 
the district. The plain is about twelve miles long 
and five miles broad, and is bare except for a few 
hamlets, a ruined fort or two, and some flocks of 
goats and sheep that pasture on its scanty growth. 
On Sunday morning I picked up a couple of gazelle 
over a mile distant, but they were too wary to 
wait for me. On Monday morning, as I was rid- 
ing home, we sighted seven of them a mile and a 
half ahead, so I left the horses to continue slowly 
along the road, and went off with a deer-driver to 
make a circuit. The sight of the horses, however, 
put the herd on their guard, and they capered off 
while we were still a mile away. The deer-driver 
went off in a hopeless attempt to head them round, 
and for an hour and a half I watched them from 
behind low scrub while he endeavoured to get 
behind them. Eventually they all disappeared, 
and I didn't much regret their escape, as I had had 
my glass most of the time on a couple of kids 
playing round their mother at the tail end of the 
herd. The temperature at midday was only about 
92° in the shade, but the whole plain was covered 
with dancing heat waves which reminded me of 
the South African karoo. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 128 

The village of Aliabad is an exaggerated ex- 
ample of the drying up of Persia. In former 
times it was a residence of the governor, and Mir 
Alam Khan, the father of the present Amir 
Shoukat ul Mulk, kept his state there in days 
when the Kainat was aii almost unknown dis- 
trict inhabited by very simple folk. Now the 
village supports only a dozen peasants. The big 
orchard-garden still contains a number of parched 
trees and a carpeting of starved vegetation. The 
great octagonal building which overlooks it is 
sadly in need of repair, but is still habitable, 
though the padlock on its solid door is only with- 
drawn for a very rare visitor. The broad lattice 
windows of the upper rooms (which have never 
known glass) are broken by the wind, and the 
ceiling boards are gaping in places. In one room 
is a trap-door, beneath which were laid the bags 
of silver and gold that formed the Amir's treasure. 
Leading from another is the Amir's private place 
of prayer, a tiny mosque or chapel for daily 
devotions. The outhouses that skirt the garden 
contain a jumble of antique furnishings, among 
which lie the costumes and armour used in the 
passion-plays that were performed there in the 
month of Muharram. 

The custodian of these ruins is an old retainer 
with a harsh voice and an air of greed and cunning. 
On the night of my arrival he promised to send 
for two shikaris who lived alone six miles away. 



124 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Next morning before dawn, when I asked if the 
shikaris had come, the boy who was supposed to 
have gone for them appeared and said that neither 
of them had been at home. ' He hes,' said I, ' he 
has not been to their home at all.' The old man 
went off protesting, and told my servant a story 
which he considered to the point. ' When I was 
here in the service of Mir Alam Khan,' he said, 
' he sent me one day to the surrounding villages 
to buy twenty fowls, and he gave me forty krans. 
At the end of the day I returned with only three 
fowls, and said : "I have been everywhere, but 
could find only these three." The Amir became 
very angry, and said : " He lies ; he has not left 
the village. Let him have ten (strokes of a whip) 
on the face." I was beaten, and some days after- 
wards he again gave me forty krans and sent 
me to buy twenty fowls. At the end of the day 
I returned to him with forty fowls which I had 
bought for twenty krans. He was satisfied with 
me then, and gave me five krans as a present.' 

The little village continued to thrive until a 
few years ago, when the water - supply became 
gradually less. Among the numerous bequests 
of Mir Alam Khan a part of the property had been 
set aside for the expense of religious festivals 
for the benefit of the villagers of the immediate 
district. These festivals and prayer meetings 
were discontinued latterly by the late Amir 
Hisam ud Douleh, who replaced them by similar 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 125 

assemblies in Birjand. Other charitable charges, 
it is said, were neglected as time went on. The 
simple story of the Aliabad villagers is that one 
day a dervish demanded the customary alms and 
was refused. ' By the soul of the dead Amir,' 
he cried, ' the prosperity of this place is at an end. 
If the water of Aliabad be not dry in three years 
from now, I have no faith in Ali ! ' The curse took 
effect, and within the stated time the one under- 
ground channel which supplied Aliabad with its 
former abundance of irrigation water had dried up. 

I mentioned this story last night to a well- 
informed Persian. He told me that the main 
water-supply of Aliabad had formerly been as 
plentiful as the present supply of Birjand. He 
ascribed the failure to the comparative drought 
of recent years, and gave the opinion that the 
same supply might still be got by digging lower 
at the top well, which would mean making a new 
channel altogether. As a matter of fact, the 
rains this year were extraordinarily good, so the 
drying up remains a mystery. 

The plain around most towns of Persia is pock- 
marked in long diverging lines with the well-heads 
of underground watercourses. It would be inter- 
esting to know the history of their use, which has 
probably continued on much the same lines for 
thousands of years. The system appears to be 
used in very few countries, so you may like to hear 
some details about it as it is practised in this dis- 



126 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

trict. The work is very simple, as no metal or 
machinery is used owing to the difficulty of trans- 
port and the lack of engineering facilities. The 
labour is consequently greater, and the trouble 
and expense of providing the average small town 
in a dry district with its water-supply should im- 
press the European who curls his lip at the apathy 
and incompetence of the lazy feckless Persian. 

The instruments used are few and inexpensive. 
The most complicated is the water- finder, of which 
only a few Persians have the secret. This water- 
finder, which I am told has a diamond and a 
magnet as parts of its construction, is kept in the 
hands of the master-builders of watercourses. It 
is said to show the presence and depth of water 
at anything down to several hundred yards below 
the surface, and to indicate the quantity available. 
Experience tells its owner where to search the 
valley, and observation with the mysterious in- 
strument does the rest. The greatest depth at 
the source, in the longest channels in use in the 
Kain district, is 250 yards. The least depth is 
fifteen feet, in the shortest channels built in the 
hills. When the master-builder has found a 
supply and estimated its depth, he next calculates 
to what distance in the required direction he 
must lead it till it comes to the surface. For this 
he uses an ordinary spirit-level of six to fourteen 
inches in length, with a measuring - pole held 
upright a hundred yards away. The readings 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 12T 

are recorded and worked out on paper, with the 
depth of the water at the source and the incline 
or gradient of two to six inches in every hundred 
yards, as factors in an arithmetical calculation. 
The length of the channel will thus depend on the 
depth at which water is tapped and the downward 
slope of the plain or valley through which it has 
to be carried. The longest course in Kain runs 
to as much as fifteen miles, the shortest is about 
a hundred yards, and the average is four to eight 
miles in length. 

The master-builder makes his report and gives 
his employer an idea of the probable cost. If 
the landowner who has engaged him decides 
favourably, an advance of money is given and the 
work is commenced. The direction above and 
below surface is obtained by an ordinary pocket 
compass, which is marked with a cross-thread, 
pointing as required, for use in tunnelling. The 
only tools used are picks and shovels and buckets, 
with a simple windlass at the well-heads. The 
top well is sunk first, and thereafter the line is 
followed by simultaneous tunnelling and well- 
sinking so contrived that the well-sinker and the 
tunneller meet at the bottom and can hear each 
other as they approach a junction. From the 
top well, also, two or three short courses may be 
taken higher up at oblique angles as feeders. 
The distance from well to well is normally equal 
to the depth of the wells themselves. The 



128 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

diameter of a deep well should be twenty-five 
inches, and of a shallow one twenty inches. The 
circumference at top and bottom is equal. In 
the case of the top wells a piece of piping projects 
from the well-head to assist ventilation during 
construction below. Near the well-head the ' wall ' 
is strengthened if necessary by stones. The well- 
heads are generally covered up on completion, 
about one in ten being left open to allow the escape 
of moist air and prevent damage. The tunnelled 
course should be twenty to twenty-five inches broad 
and forty to forty-five inches high, from start to 
finish. Generally speaking, an upflow is imprac- 
ticable as the lower levels preceding it would fill 
with water and could not be entered for repairs : 
but in passing a depression such as a ravine the 
water is borne below through a course lined with 
burnt half -bricks and lime, which carries it along 
and up again to its normal channel beyond. 
This brickwork is soaked with standing water for 
ten days after construction, and then lasts ' for 
ever,' whereas iron would require renewal. 

The labourers employed work from two hours 
after sunrise till an hour or an hour and a half 
before sunset, with an interval of half an hour for 
their midday meal. Their wages are eightpence 
a day. In other places such as Teheran the work 
is continued night and day when necessary. 
Danger to life depends largely on the skill and 
care of the foreman. I understand that no lives 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 129 

have been lost in this district in the last few 
years. 

The time required to complete a hundred yards 
in ordinary soil, including both well and channel, 
is from three to five months. The time for a 
whole qanat depends on the number of windlasses 
used. Gravelly soil is better for tunnelling, as 
soft soil requires a certain amount of strengthen- 
ing with brick. A qanat of eight miles in length 
will ordinarily require about twenty pounds 
annually for repairs. 

Clay soil, it is said, gives warm water, and gravel 
gives cool water. The wastage in very gravelly 
soil is said to be one- third of the flow over a course 
of four miles. This can be reduced to one-fourth 
by layering the floor of the channel with earth. 
The slower the flow in a qanat the more brackish 
the water will be. A gravel course gives water 
of a better quality, and even reduces original 
brackishness. In gravel soil the radius of water 
drainage or attraction at the top wells is 
reckoned as about eighteen hundred yards. No 
one else has a right to build within this catch- 
ment area. A qanat may be carried below 
another man's land, and if the owner of the land 
allows a well to be sunk on it, then the owner of 
the qanat becomes the owner of the well-head 
surface to the extent of four yards radius in the 
country, or two and a half yards in town. 



130 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

BiRjAND, 23rd August 1916. 

Dear M.,— Captain went up to Sihdeh a 

fortnight ago with a hundred Baluch mounted 
levies, and after a few days we got the pleasing 
news that he had captured a real live German. 
The prisoner was brought here in due course, and 
after some days in Birjand, was sent down to 
Seistan en route for India. He is one of the bold 
adventurers who found their way across Persia 
to Herat and down to Kabul last autumn. These 
breeders of enmity haven't had a very successful 
time in Afghanistan, and are now trying to make 
their way home again. The captured man was 
dressed as an Afghan even to his boots, which 
must have weighed about ten pounds. He was 
lodged at the vice-consulate, and his treatment 
surprised and amused some of the simple Bir- 
jandis, who apparently expected him to be flung 
in a cell and tortured, or led round the town in 
triumph. ' How is your honoured guest ? ' they 
asked ironically. ' Has he been to call on any 
one yet ? ' The man of the moment (otherwise 
known as Ewe Lamb No. 2) smoked innumerable 
cigarettes, and asked if he might have some French 
books in place of the gelignite and other playthings 

which had been taken from him. Major 

called on me to supply the literature, and I sent 
him what I could find, after getting the books 
dusted. There were five of them, as follows : — 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 131 

La Langue de VAvesta. 

UEsprit des Lois. 

Balladen und Romanzen. 

Deutsche Lyrik. 

Handbuch der Regionalen Geologic (Persien). 

One of them I had never even looked at. Poor 
German prisoner ! The servant who brought me 

Major 's verbal request didn't like the look 

of the books, and his roving eye lighted up with 
approval at the sight of a few London pictorial 
weeklies on a side-table in my sitting-room. ' It 
is well that you send those, sahib,' said he ; ' they 
are full of amusing pictures.' ' Abdul Husein,' 
said I, ' you are lacking in discernment. There 
are certain flippancies in those periodicals which 
might not appeal to the good taste of a German 
prisoner in war-time.' ' It is true,' he assented, 
with a knowing smile. I recalled (and no doubt 
so did he) an incident of a week before when I had 
given him an old copy of the Sketch. It was open 
at a full-page caricature of two grotesque British 
Tommies, with cigarettes and concertina trousers. 
Abdul Husein, who cannot read, jumped to the 
obvious conclusion as he studied the picture. 
' Bah, bah ! ' said he, ' look at these Germans ! 
From what a man hears about them they might 
be something. But when once you see their 
photographs / . . .' 

This afternoon at lunch I asked my man what 



132 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

news he had. He answered that he had heard 
that there were large numbers of Germans at 
Yezd and Kerman, and that a Turkish army had 
entered Teheran. The truth as regards all three 
towns is very much the reverse, but he wasn't to 
be blamed for not knowing it. We ourselves 
have had very conflicting reports in the last week 
as to the situation at the capital. Nearly two 
months ago the Turks commenced an advance 
into Persia on a serious scale. The little old 
Russian telegraphist told me one day that the 
great Mackensen was advancing on the Kerman- 
shah road with two army corps of Germans. The 
second evacuation of Kermanshah by the Russians 
was reported officially, and for some time the 
troops faced each other at Bisitun on the way to 
Hamadan. About the 8th of this month our 
friends left Hamadan, and from the reports we 
had during the next week it looked as if the Turks 
were advancing by rapid marches on the capital. 
On the 17th it was telegraphed that the European 
women and children were leaving Teheran. On 
the 20th we heard that the colony, including the 
British and Russian legations, were about to 
make a hasty exit. On the 21st we were semi- 
officially informed that the Turks were nowhere 
near the capital, that the Russians had no inten- 
tion of letting them get there, and that the lega- 
tions had not the least intention of taking up 
quarters elsewhere. The least interesting report 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 133 

was, of course, the last one, which for the moment 
put an unkindly stop to our engrossing specula- 
tions on the immediate future. We have seen 
so many news-bombs turn into bubbles in the 
past year ! Our morbid minds, however, are still 
inspired with profane hopes of sensation. ' I 
wonder,' says A., ' if there are really 20,000 
Germans advancing on that line ? If they take 
Teheran they '11 force this wretched country into 
war, and the governor here will get a nice long 
telegram telling him to act accordingly. It 's a 
situation that 's worth considering. Say when.' 
' The Turks,' says B., ' will be cut off and forced 
to surrender after losing half their effectives. 
Simultaneously our troops will advance from Kut 
and take Baghdad. In another two months I 
shall be on my way back to India. Here 's luck.' 
The kite-flying season is in full swing, and the 
little boys of Birjand are out every evening. 
Their kites are rectangular in shape and have a 
framework of split reeds, covered with painted 
paper, and with a convex surface facing the wind. 
Across the concave back they attach strips of 
paper cut into teeth-like lines of streamers, and 
the wind, rustling through these, makes a fair 
imitation of the whirring of an aeroplane. 

Birjand, 18th October 1916. 
Dear M., — ^You will be interested to learn that 
the Birjand football season commenced six weeks 



134 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

ago, and is now in full swing. We can just 
manage to raise two elevens at present, as there 
are barely a dozen Indian troopers left in town, 
the rest of the squadron being out on patrol duty. 
Of these sowars about six men are available, and 

Captain makes up his eleven with the help 

of the sub-assistant surgeon, the S. and T. clerk, 

the local washerman, and Major 's cook, not 

to mention the hope of his side, who is the gallant 
major himself. My side includes a young Sikh 
trader, a comb-maker, and a tailor, with three of 
my own servants and a number of other people's. 
My cook broke his leg badly at the game last 
spring and is still a cripple, which accounts for 
the shyness of certain former players who excuse 
themselves this year. It is hard work teaching 
the Persians to keep their proper places on the 
field and to co-operate loyally, especially as in 
the ordinary affairs of their lives they haven't 
quite learned those two points of importance. 
They make rapid progress, however, and show 
more intelligence and activity than the long-legged 
Indians, whose brains are seldom in their boots 
when they are required there. The comparison 
applies racially, as is agreed by many who know 
both countries well. Given the same good govern- 
ment and the same material opportunities, there 
seems little doubt of the Persian proving the 
better man all round. 

We are having the teams photographed by a 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 135 

young Persian who is quite an expert with the 
camera. Persians are very fond of seeing them- 
selves in print, and the reHgious objection is 
waived nowadays. Mirza Reza, the photographer 
in question, told me some time ago of an encounter 
he had when he first took up the hobby. The 
chief priest heard of it and sent for him. ' You 
know,' said the old man, ' that reproductions of 
the human form are against the holy law. You 
must discontinue this irregular practice, or I will 
denounce you as an offender.' Mirza Reza stood 
his ground and showed the old man some photo- 
graphs of noted religious leaders taken in Teheran 
and elsewhere. He apparently demonstrated the 
harmlessness of his work, for after some discussion 
the worthy sheikh gave way and withdrew his 
ban. ' When we had reached that point,' said 
Mirza Reza to me, ' I thanked him and told him 
that I had a request to make. " What is it ? " 
he asked. I said : " You have seen my camera, 
and you have kindly allowed me to go on taking 
photographs of respectable people. I wish now 
to take yours." He consented, and I took two 
good photographs. Here is a copy of one of 
them, which I beg you to accept.' 

The Russian and Turkish forces still face each 
other somewhere about Hamadan in the west. 
That district seems to have become an established 
front, which has apparently settled down to 
comparative immobility just as Mesopotamia did 



136 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

after the siege of Kut. We get very little news 
of the provinces now, and so far as we know they 
are all quiet. The last year has produced a 
momentous development in Persia in the direc- 
tion of joint supervision by Britain and Russia — 
a gradual insinuation of forces set in motion by 
political necessity and carried on by their own 
natural impetus. The influence of the two 
powers is now practically paramount,, but its 
exercise is wisely confined to meeting our im- 
mediate needs and consolidating our interests in 
the light of the war in Europe. The result at the 
moment, as seen in Birjand, is unfortunate for 
the internal affairs of this country. The tra- 
ditional bribery, extortion, and misappropriation 
indulged in by the official classes (largely because 
of their insecurity of tenure) continue in a worse 
degree than formerly. The central authority of 
the Persian government, which exercised some 
sort of intermittent check on corrupt administra- 
tion, is now enfeebled and listless, while public 
opinion is in a corresponding state. Later on, 
let us hope, the requisite control will be estab- 
lished on modem lines. 

The Birjand merchants, true to their class in 
Persia, have shown extraordinary staying-power 
throughout the difficulties and hardships of the 
last two years. The valuable carpet industry has 
collapsed utterly, and the import trade with India 
has been at a standstill owing to insecurity of 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 137 

traffic and lack of transport on the long road 
through British Baluchistan. In spite of heavy 
losses, however, these good people carry on with 
the hope of better days and with the exercise of 
mutual forbearance and kindly common sense. 
Their recuperative powers will not fail them when 
the time comes. The humbler classes of men — 
the artisans, the labourers, the village peasantry 
— ^are waiting and watching, as always, with in- 
finite patience and good humour, for that brighter 
prospect which has been so often promised and so 
long veiled. One wishes much for the uncertain 
future of these people, and one wonders what the 
road will be like ahead — they have stumbled over 
such rough ways ! ' To travel hopefully . . . ' ? 
Yes, but hope must be renewed by achievement. 
One prays that their rulers may be wise — that 
their leaders and administrators may be well 
chosen, combining ability with rectitude, and 
energy with caution ; for to walk circumspectly 
is better than to outrun, as the country's recent 
history shows. The Persian Problem cannot 
perhaps be solved, because it is a living thing and 
has many features which change with the times. 
Doubtless, however, ' the true success is to labour.' 

BiRjAND, 4!th December 1916. 

Dear M., — ^To-day we have had our first rain 
since late spring — a gentle shower from clouds 
that couldn't quite make up their minds what to 



138 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

do even after days of loitering over our heads. 
We have longed for rain and the smell of damp 
earth as General Townshend's men at Kut must 
have longed for the whiff of tobacco when their 
pipes had been empty for months. So I went out 
in the afternoon, climbed a little hill, and walked 
joyously under grey skies along the whaleback 
ridge east of the town. Bare earth everywhere, 
hardly moistened on the surface by a few hours' 
rainfall — about as satisfying to the nostrils as a 
dry old bone to a hungry dog. The dog, I suppose, 
gets his pleasure from the association of ideas, 
and feasts in imagination while his tongue is busy 
with a desiccated relic : so I, tramping the 
gravelly heights, conjured up sight and smell of 
dark, fresh-turned furrows and steaming, odorous 
thickets. Presently, however, a glance back at 
the crazy little town, caught in a new light and 
from an unusual vantage-point, recalled to my 
mind vague pictures of the East seen in early days 
at home. The veil of sophistication was removed 
for a moment, and I had a bright vision of that 
romantic wondrous East which is known only to 
children and strangers. So might a domestic 
person, solemnly eating a cutlet for the thousand 
and first time with his wife at the other end of the 
table, suddenly look up at the poise of the lady's 
arm or the curve of her shoulder, and fall to 
thinking of fairy princesses. 

Later, as I looked down from the rolling up- 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 139 

lands across the southern plain, I had the same 
sensation of recaptured dreams, though in this 
case not for the first time. The fiat plain, sloping 
imperceptibly up to the dark mountain range 
which loomed along the whole misty background, 
was relieved in the nudity of its dull expanse by 
the presence of half a dozen hamlets and home- 
steads dotted at wide distances apart over its 
surface. Chief among these, the Amir's residence 
and garden marked the centre of the plain — high 
mud walls, bare trees, abrupt structural outlines, 
clean-cut in the midst of nothing. To it (and 
herein lay the magic) a white roadway was 
tracked straight across the plain from the town, 
like a guiding finger. Seen from where I stood, 
that white, unbroken, undeviating track could be 
nothing but the royal road of nursery travel, and 
the palace to which it led must surely be the home 
of romance and the goal of adventure. Such, you 
may say, are the virtues of two qualities — sim- 
plicity and distance, the secrets of nature's 
cunning in Persia : relieving the picture of all 
inessential detail, she gives point and conviction 
to the fancy, and then leaves it undistracted to 
its play, like a child well set with his toys. Hence, 
partly, the fact that Persia has given us such fine 
stories for children. 

While we are talking of children, I may as well 
give you the distressing news about my sherbetdar 
(* bearer of sherbet '—house-boy). Hassan has 



140 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

taken to the society of ghouls, who visit him 
every other night. When he is in bed with the 
lamp out and his head under the quilt, he hears 
a pattering and scraping on the roof. (' A night- 
bird or a street dog on the prowl ? ' ' Certainly 
not. Quite a different noise.') Then he hears a 
scratching at the door. (' That accursed grey 
cat on its way to the kitchen ? ' ' No, no ! Quite 
a different noise, and at the door of my own room.') 
A-a-ah ! Then the ghoul enters, and feels his 
way about stealthily, trying to find Hassan. Fi 
fo fum ! Hassan lies in a cold sweat, with his 
head under the quilt and a great weight on top 
of him so that he is unable to move. ' And what 
does the ghoul look like ? ' ' He comes in the 
dark, sahib, and I have never seen him.' ' Then 
how do you know he is there ? ' ' Because of the 
noises. I can hear him moving about, and feel 
him sitting on my chest. And if it isn't a ghoul, 
why should I be unable to stir head or foot ? ' 
' Belly-slave boy, you eat too much roughan at 
nights, it seems ! ' ' Not at all, sahib. It 's a 
real ghoul, and I know what he 's like, because I 
have heard all about ghouls. Every one knows 
about them. He goes away after a while, and I 
put my head out and find no sign of him. But 
one night I '11 catch him and get the sad-dinar 
coin which they say he always has lying on his 
tongue. Whoever gets that coin becomes rich, 
because whenever he spends it it always returns 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 141 

to his pocket.' ' Hassan,' said I, ' to-morrow 
you will go to the doctor, who will give you some 
pills to take every night. Those pills are talism, 
and their power is such that when you swallow 
one no ghoul can come near you. It is Feranghi 
magic' Hassan smiled knowingly, and promised 
to obey. But he kept his own convictions on 
the subject. 

When I was in Ahwaz in south-western Persia, 
I was sitting alone by the fire one night after 
dinner. (We burned fires for a few weeks in the 
winter at Ahwaz.) My head-servant had gone 
home, and the sherbetdar, who slept on the pre- 
mises, came in as usual about half-past nine to 
mend the fire. When he had done this he with- 
drew to the doorway and stood there waiting. 
He was an active little man with a snuffle — 
aged about twenty and addicted to opium. I 
looked round. ' Yes ? ' ' Sahib, I 'm afraid to 
be alone. There 's no one near me outside, and 
it 's a dark night, and the syce has been frighten- 
ing me.' My stableman was a fellow with an 
enormous head, a fierce rolling eye, a deep rumb- 
ling voice, and a sense of humour. ' What has the 
syce done ? ' ' He told me that last night when you 
were out he saw three jinns sitting where you are 
sitting now.' ' Yes ? ' ' They were 'playing with 
their heads. '' Can you picture a trio of decapi- 
tated jinns tossing their heads to each other, or 
playing skittles with them ? It 's difficult, but 



142 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

very fascinating. I considered the idea for some 
time, and then scouted the possibiHty. ' The 
syce has been fooHng you,' I said. ' Tell him 
that I myself have discoursed with those same 
3 inns, and have arranged that they will visit him 
to-morrow at midnight. Let him beware.' The 
little man grinned happily. I then lectured him 
on the necessity of overcoming the superstitious 
terrors of his childhood, and tried to convince him 
that jinns were the invention of disordered minds. 
He went away comforted, for the time being at 
any rate. 

The ghoul appears to be a harmless creature, a 
mere nightmare who sits on a man's chest, but is 
not to be feared otherwise. The jinn is more 
formidable and may proceed from annoyance to 
actual torture. Thus an outraged jinn has been 
known to put a man head downwards flat against 
a high wall and halfway up it, keep him there by 
invisible means, and beat him mercilessly. There- 
fore it is wise and prudent to take precautions on 
a thousand occasions. For instance, when you 
throw dirty water in your compound or your 
garden, be careful to say bismillah first, so that a 
possible jinn lurking behind a bush may avoid a 
splashing, and you yourself may not incur his 
wrath. 

But we are a long way from Christmas, and 
when this letter reaches you Christmas will be 
gone and forgotten, so enough of the supernatural. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 143 

BiRJAND, 5th January 1917. 

Dear M., — I am very sorry about your accident 
— it isn't cheering to think of your being hung up 
in comparative inactivity for a whole month or 
more, with all your faculties about you, nursing 
a wounded arm when you want to be nursing 
other people's. You seem quite happy about it — 
almost aggressively happy, so perhaps it is only 
your friends who are distressed. Knowing they 
will be, you really ought not to be so merry. At 
any rate, I insist on thinking of you as fretting 
and fuming, with your mind like a water-beetle 
gyrating on a pond, or like a ship's propeller racing 
above the waves in a storm. A serious illness, 
now, would be another matter. A man might 
lose a lot of blood and grow weak : his fluid 
energy might become diluted, his sensibilities be 
softened and refined, and he might lie, part of the 
time, in a state of divine contentment bordering 
on Nirvana, till the fates saw fit to break his 
inglorious peace by ordering his recovery and 
return to harness. 

Anyway, I hope you are better, and as your last 
letter is dated 3rd November and you may read 
this any time between the end of February and 
the middle of April, it seems probable that my 
pious wish will have been granted before you see 
it expressed — which illustrates the drawbacks of 
conversational correspondence in war-time when 



144 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

letters have to suffer the vagaries of foreign travel 
and the contempt of mere time peculiar to over- 
worked censors. Imagine the absurdity of asking 
Mrs. Smith over the telephone if her cold is better, 
and running excitedly to the instrument four 
months later to get her reply ! 

In your last letter, on the other hand, you ap- 
peared to recognise the futility of being topical 
under such conditions, and you plunged me forth- 
with into a vortex of great ideas, the fruits, I 
suppose, of your enforced leisure. You think the 
war is lasting too long, and defeating its own ends. 
But you think, too, that we shall all be good boys 
when it is over, and that life will be more beautiful, 
with the beauty of the earth after a spring storm. 
And you have just read a book which is much 
talked of, wherein you find your ideas confirmed. 
Do you know you make me feel very old ? I 
have resolved that I shall read no more history. . . . 
I don't know anything about the war. It 's too 
big a thing to follow it through and speculate on 
its results. I can only think of it in terms of a 
schoolboy fight or a faction brawl which one 
watches from a distance unless one is taking a 
hand in it. While it is at its height, who can say 
what the upshot will be, or how the domestic re- 
lations and social philosophy of the individual 
parties will be affected thereby in the future ? 

Nevertheless, I found your reflections very 
arresting. They shewed, for one thing, the 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 145 

present effect of the war on the outlook of one 
individual. I wanted at once to sit down by a 
fire with you and talk it over and out, this great 
matter. I am simply incapable of rising to your 
grand conceptions on paper. You say war is a 
horrible thing while it lasts, but excellent in its 
after-effects. I supposed that war was a splendid 
thing while it lasted, but might be very depressing 
in its after-effects. Bullying, of course, is not in 
the question, though even the boy who beats the 
bully must be a little depressed when he realises 
that his own face is disfigured and his trousers 
are torn. I suggest that war and peace, at their 
height, are both times of splendour, but that the 
reactions from either are depressing. I hasten 
to add that I think you are quite right. 

The Persian army, as represented in this little 
country town, is a thing of sheer delight, a perfect 
Home of Varieties. I sometimes think that an 
absolute government breeds individualism in a 
race more than any other. Under despotic power 
the people, relieved of the cramping necessity of 
ruling themselves, develop idiosyncrasies which 
you will not find in the members of a corporate 
institution or the subjects of a democratic govern- 
ment. In these Persian infantrymen, at least, 
there is much to please the eye and feed the fancy. 
Their ages, I find, vary between twelve and forty- 
five or more, the boy of twelve shouldering a 
rifle like the rest. Their uniforms exhibit all 

K 



146 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

degrees of age and completeness, from that of the 
newly-equipped recruit to that of the dejected- 
looking person who has nothing uniform about 
him except his tunic and his belt. Their manner 
of saluting is full of character. There is the 
enthusiast with an ideal, who fixes his eyes 
ahead of him as he sees you coming, then suddenly 
draws up as he meets you, jerks his head towards 
your flank with a breakneck movement, glares at 
you fiercely, and brings his hand up smartly. 
There is the ingratiating one, who makes his head 
and his hand meet halfway, and smiles on you 
amiably. There is the contemplative spirit, who 
puts his hand to his brow as if he were thinking 
of something. There is the conscientious one, 
who takes the side of the road on your approach, 
adopts his position by numbers — one, two, three — 
and performs the serious business in methodical 
fashion. There is the anti-militarist, who merely 
salutes you verbally as if he were a civilian ; and 
there is the man of sturdy independence, who 
doesn't salute you at all. 

There is also the aforesaid lad of twelve, who 
is oppressed with the burden of manhood, and 
salutes you with indescribable dignity and sol- 
emnity, raising and lowering his arm in a full, 
slow, majestic sweep. With imperturbable con- 
centration on the job in hand, he ignores the jibes 
of a little fellow in civilian dress, his erstwhile 
chum, who mimics him from a safe distance. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 147 

Poor little soldier ! If you saw him I am sure 
you would want to pat him on the cheek and give 
him a penny ; and I shudder at the thought. 

The soldiers here receive their pay from the 
local revenue office, the recent chief of which was 
hostile to the governor and said he had no money. 
His statement was probably true, but the soldiers, 
after waiting in vain for the promised settlement 
of arrears, demanded satisfaction on his person and 
tracked him down to the house of a friend of his. 
The friend intervened and was made a substitute, 
while the treasury agent escaped by the roof and 
shortly afterwards fled the town. A few weeks 
ago a dispute arose between two army officers of 
high rank. They met in the street and fell to 
dignified abuse which ended in one of them draw- 
ing his sword at the other. Telegrams flew to 
the capital as usual, and as a result another 
ruffled official has just left Birjand. 

BiRJAND, 20ih February 1917. 
Dear M., — The Amir Hisam ud Douleh has been 
dismissed from the governorship, and the Amir 
Shoukat ul Mulk has been reappointed and will 
be here in a month or so. The people are rather 
apathetic about it. What they would most like 
is to see the rivals made friends. They are tired 
of this ding-dong business with governors and 
officials, which encourages maladministration and 
hastens the impoverishment of the country. No 



148 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

one has serious fault to find with either of the two 
amirs, both of whom are excellent governors when 
judged by Persian standards, though, if the truth 
be said, neither of them has shown much public 
spirit or interest in the progressive development of 
the district. The present state of Persian politics 
hardly conduces to the fostering of national 
vitality. The tribal chiefs and political hotheads 
who butted in to the support of our enemies have 
mostly dropped out of the losing game, and the 
British and Russian representatives, threatened, 
you remember, with a stab in the back at a critical 
time, have since been in no mood to repeat their 
handsome proposals for a friendly understanding 
which would have been creditable to all concerned. 
While the war continues, the military interests of 
the Allies are paramount in their thoughts. The 
native virtues of the Persian placemen who gain 
their approval are necessarily of less immediate 
importance than their subservience to our inter- 
ests, and the under-current of corruption flows on 
with but little check or restraint. 

Here is a simple case of what happens in 
Birjand. A young man, after leaving school, en- 
tered the service of the revenue department. He 
worked well, and within a short time he was sent 
on duty to a district a few leagues away. After 
a while he was recalled, and his chief, alleging 
various shortcomings, fined him a sum equal to 
his salary for three months. He was a poor lad 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 149 

and could not afford to lose his position and his 
reputation, so, doing as others did, he borrowed 
the amount and paid the ' fine,' which was simply 
private blackmail. He was then allowed to 
return to his post, where he reimbursed himself as 
quickly as possible by methods he had formerly 
scrupled to adopt. 

The opium monopoly is administered here by a 
branch of the revenue office, with results which 
you may divine. The juice of the poppy is 
bought by the revenue people, part of it being 
exported by dealers. For local use in the common 
form of shireh, the opium is put into cauldrons 
over a fire and burnt till it is as black and hard 
as charcoal. The remains of smoked shireh col- 
lected from the bowls of the opium pipes in the 
local ' dens ' are then mixed with this in the pro- 
portion of two parts burnt opium and one part 
burnt shireh. The mixture is put into other 
cauldrons, water is added, and it is boiled for 
some hours. The liquid is strained off several 
times, and on the final boiling becomes yellow and 
sticky like soft toffee. This result of the simple 
process is the shireh, which is sold for consump- 
tion at the present price of two miscals for one 
kran (equivalent to about one rupee for an ounce), 
conditional on the return of the burnt shireh. If 
' returned empties ' are not arranged for, the price 
is doubled. The extract has not the obnoxious 
smell of the ordinary drug when smoked, and it 



150 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

is much more powerful in its effects. Another 
form of shireh is prepared in much the same 
manner, but without the addition of burnt shireh. 
This pure extract is the most potent form of the 
drug. 

BiRJAND, 2nd April 1917. 

Dear M., — The Amir Shoukat ul Mulk has come 
back and the rivals have promised to be friends, 
so it is no longer ' a plague o' both your houses.' 
Our erstwhile King Charles appears to be turning 
into a cynic, a little blase and indifferent, dis- 
couraged perhaps, and more consentant, but with 
his sense of humour unduUed. He has had ample 
leisure in Teheran to observe the workings of 
government, and the result, I suppose, is not to be 
wondered at. 

The railway from India is at last creeping on. 
The Baluchistan line, which runs from Quetta to 
Nushki, was extended during the winter for a 
further seven stages to Dalbandin, which is about 
a third of the way from Nushki to Persia. Pre- 
sumably we may expect to see it brought still 
nearer the Persian frontier, to the benefit of trade 
and intercourse with India. In the north-east 
the Russians have made surveys for a branch line 
from their Transcaspian railway to Meshed, a dis- 
tance of under a hundred miles. Some day, per- 
haps, when railways are becoming an antiquated 
form of locomotion, these two lines may meet 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 151 

at Birjand. Meanwhile, such tentative advances 
as these, with the Julfa-Tabriz hne and the Moham- 
merah-Khurramabad project, are to be preferred 
to grandiose schemes for Transpersian railways 
which fail to materialise. 

This morning, as I was out walking before 
breakfast, I passed our football ground, where I 
saw the consular levy sowars at foot-drill. It 
was interesting to find that they had not the field 
to themselves as they usually have, but were shar- 
ing it with the local artillery company. It was 
a curious juxtaposition — on one side an artillery 
unit of the Persian army under their own officers, 
marching and manoeuvring smartly enough : on 
the other side a troop of Baluchis and Seistanis 
in the pay of the British government, armed with 
our service rifle and performing evolutions at the 
command of an Indian N.C.O. The Persian 
gunners are much superior in appearance and 
efficiency to their humble brothers of the regular 
Persian infantry, being better equipped and 
better paid than the mere sarbdz. Their com- 
missioned officers, like those of the infantry and 
the cavalry, are trained in Teheran. The men 
themselves are a mixed draft from the local 
population, some of them petty shopkeepers 
torn by force from a thriving business. Their 
term of service is nominally three years. 

The consular levies are recruited from the tribes- 
men, stock-raisers, and cultivators of the Seistan 



152 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

and frontier districts. They have not been 
assigned full uniform as yet, but being well paid 
and well officered they have already imbibed the 
company spirit, and have contrived a certain 
uniformity in their native dress, assisted by the 
indispensable puttee. Some of them are hand- 
some fellows, soft-featured, dark-hued, curly- 
haired, supple of limb. They are a promising, 
workmanlike lot, with a pride of arms and a 
responsive manner very different from that of 
the Persian regular. Their scraggy, sinewy little 
ponies are provided by themselves, and are well 
broken to work. The force numbers a hundred 
men, and is principally engaged on patrol and 
outpost duty towards the Afghan frontier. 

The British officer commanding these mounted 
levies (he was fighting in Flanders a year ago) 
wasn't enthusiastic over his material when he 
first handled it. He compared these southerners 
dolefully with the men of the Hazara foot levies 
also to be seen in this district. These Hazaras 
were recruited by our consulate in Meshed, where 
they are known as Berberis. Many of them were 
old soldiers of the Indian army, and they had all 
been in training for some time. They are Central 
Asian in type and origin, exiled from Afghanistan ; 
but to say they resemble Chinese would be in- 
adequate and unfair, for some of them resemble 
nothing on earth, and no two men are alike. A 
chosen squad of them, displayed to the audience 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 153 

at a London music-hall, would have little to do 
but smile for their salaries. The officer com- 
manding the Seistani levies eyed these Hazaras, 
and wondered at their sturdy thick-set figures, 
the enormous skulls of some, the narrow glistening 
eyes and wrinkled faces of all : he noted their 
smartness on parade despite their lack of uniform, 
and he smiled appreciatively at little touches of 
swagger and gaiety in their bearing and dress 
when off duty. Then he turned regretfully to 
his own men, the soft sensuous untutored men of 
the hot plains and the naked hills. He was soon 
content however, for he found them take shape 
under the moulding of the Indian N.C.O.'s, and 
discovered that they had an eye for a target, a 
caressing affection for a rifle, and the tribal sense 
of loyalty to good leadership. The CO. is doing 
creative work, and rather likes it. 

The Hazara levies in Birjand are only a small 
guard party. Their headquarters are a few 
stages to the south at Neh, where a part of the 
levy force is recruited from yet another tribe — 
the Bahlui. The Bahluis are tent-dwellers of 
pure Persian descent, breeders of sheep, stout 
fellows who think nothing of fifty miles for a day's 
march. 

Apart from these levies we still have about fifty 
men of an Indian cavalry regiment stationed at 
Birjand and a stage or two north. The Russian 
vice-consul has an escort of a few Cossacks, and 



154 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

the Russian dispensary has a guard of five men 
of a Siberian regiment. You will observe that 
in spite of our pacific manner of life the military- 
element is not lacking. 

What does the Persian regular soldier think of 
all this ? He didn't like it at first, and minor 
complications arose. But that was a long time 
ago — a year and a half ago. Nowadays perfect 
peace is observed. I expect he wonders what he 
keeps on drilling for — what everybody keeps on 
drilling for : and he probably concludes that he, 
a sarbdz, is a mere appanage of royalty, a con- 
stituent of pomp and circumstance, as the humble 
infantryman was throughout Persia before the 
days of the Swedish gendarmerie. I recall the 
comment of a Bakhtiari horseman who accom- 
panied ^me for some days on a journey to the 
coast from Isfahan. He was describing a suc- 
cessful little warring expedition of three hundred 
Bakhtiari cavalry and a thousand regular in- 
fantry sent out from Teheran some years ago. I 
noticed that in his narrative of exploits he said 
nothing about the thousand infantry, so I asked 
him how they fared. ' Oh, they did very well,' 
he replied airily ; ' in fact they were rather useful, 
as they always fetched food and fuel for us in 
camp, and took our horses to water. They didn't 
fight, of course,' he added. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 155 

BiEJAND, 30th April 1917. 

Dear M., — I am for the road again at last — 
Meshed, Askabad, Baku, Resht, Teheran, and, 
if the fates are kind, Hamadan and Kermanshah, 
the last being my destination. I sent you a 
telegram with the joyful news, and if you got it — 
which I doubt — you will have realised (1) that I 
am coming nearer Europe, from the eastern 
border of Persia to the western; (2) that I am to 
see new country and a highway famous in Persia's 
history for some three thousand years ; (3) that I 
am to have the privilege of visiting a recent front 
of war and of settling down in a place which the 
Turk has held for the greater part of a year. It 
is barely two months now since the Russians 
occupied Hamadan, and less than that since they 
entered Kermanshah on the way to meet our 
troops who were busy about Baghdad. People 
tell me Kermanshah is a pleasant spot, blessed 
v/ith a good water-supply, gardens, and vineyards. 
They say it has a population of 40,000, as to 
which my gazetteer says 60,000 and my encyclo- 
paedia says 30,000, while another authority puts 
it at 80,000 ; but they all speak of pre-war con- 
ditions, which by no means apply now. 

After over three years and a half it is pleasant 
to see the doors open again, and to prepare to 
quit what was becoming a house of detention. 
Change, movement,— the most desirable things to 



156 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

a man confined — new scenes, new types, new 
adventurings within this sea of islands which is 
Persia. Look you, I was getting grey-haired in 
Birjand, and now the process is arrested. I find 
myself accordingly in sympathy with the Russians 
of our little colony, who have had a new world 
opened to them in the last six weeks, and who 
live from day to day in a turmoil of excitement. 
I have been learning a little of the Russian lan- 
guage lately, and I now adventure through the 
forests of words in the latest newspapers from 
Petrograd. What speeches, declarations, mani- 
festos, warnings, appeals ! The press is full of 
the clamours of this awesome revolution. Re- 
leases and arrests, dismissals and appointments — 
the general post goes on daily, and there seems no 
end to the holding of meetings and the passing of 
resolutions. Poor Russian bear ! He has found 
wings, and would become a Pegasus, but he 
doesn't yet know how to use them, and is in 
terrible travail, trying them this way and that. 
And, meanwhile, the hunters are ever on his track, 
and the newspapers report daily from the scenes 
of war, thus : ' Artillery activity, raids and aerial 
reconnaissances ' — ^which is just what seems to be 
happening in their political world, with, in both 
cases, the threat of a possible worse to come, and 
yet, shining through it all, the hope of a glorious 
better. 

The Russian vice-consul has removed from his 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 157 

sitting-room his portrait of the Tsar, and its place 
is now blank, with a horrible great nail left stick- 
ing in the wall. The Persian military band has 
dropped the Russian national hymn like a hot 
potato, and now practises assiduously — as a 
temporary substitute, for ceremonial occasions — 
the Marseillaise. The vice-consul, the doctor, 
and the telegraphist, with their respective wives, 
meet in each other's houses and indulge in the 
new freedom of speech, talking omnivorously, 
like famished people at a pastry-cook's who eat 
all that comes their way. Meetings ! Meetings ! 
The word has a magic sound to these representa- 
tives of Free Russia. 

I listened to them recently for half an hour, and 
could make little of it. They all spoke at once, 
no one heeding his neighbour. ' What are you 
talking about ? ' I asked my host. ' Politics,' 
he replied with a hearty laugh. ' But what sort 
of politics ? ' ' All sorts. A. is a Social-Revolu- 
tionary, B. is a Democrat, C. is a Monarchist, D. 
is a Republican.' ' And what are you ? ' I asked, 
as he finished his third tumbler of tea sweetened 
with sugar and jam. ' I ? I am a Cadet ! ' 
And he plunged into the discussion again. 

I visited my old friend the Chief of the Mer- 
chants the other day, and he politely expressed 
his regrets that I should be going away ' just 
when we have got to know each other.' Ap- 
parently the idea of parting led the old man to 



158 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

thoughts of after-Hfe, and reminded him of the in- 
visible wall between us, for he set out by indirect 
attack to make a Mohammedan of me, referring 
significantly to the fact that many Englishmen, 
as he was told, had recognised the superiority of 
Islam and become converts. I told him I had 
not met any, and indicated an absence of any 
great sympathy or admiration for converts to 
either faith, suggesting that a man could not 
change his skin, and that such matters were more 
than skin-deep. ' Blood and race are all very 
well,' said he, ' but this is above them. A man 
must examine for himself and accept the truth 
where he finds it.' The dogmatic old man, I 
knew, could never be persuaded that so far as 
the truth was concerned that invisible wall was 
a mere fabric of men's minds and had no existence 
at all. So we left it at that. And perhaps he 
was right, and no doubt he had a comforting 
sense that he was doing a pious thing in breaking, 
for once in a way, the general convention of 
silence on such matters. 

BiRJAND, SOth May 1917. 
Dear M., — There has been a round of revelry 
lately at the house of one townsman after another, 
concerned with an event which takes place in the 
life of Mohammedan boys between the ages of 
six and thirteen. The occasion, as observed here, 
is one of hospitality even more than a wedding is. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 159 

It has this point of similarity with our wed- 
dings, that the guests give presents ; but with the 
difference that the presents — which are mostly 
in money — precede the invitations, instead of 
reluctantly following them. The after-dinner 
public entertainment, which is a feature of the 
celebrations, is rather a poor affair in Birjand. 
The father of the family, or the nearest male 
relative, instals a pair of sorry musicians with 
fife and drum in his compound ; the humbler 
townsfolk gather to the sound, the buffoon 
diverts them with rustic fooling, and those who 
have a mind to it join in the dancing, while the 
women watch the show from the flat roof. At 
about three hours after sunset they disperse to 
their homes. This ' show,' as they simply name 
it, is repeated for three to eight days according 
to the social position of the host, who throughout 
the period, or thereafter, dispenses more material 
hospitality to a large or small number of guests. 
The season for the ceremony, you will notice, is 
the late spring. 

I have not witnessed these shows, but I have 
lately seen some fine free dancing of a more 
organised nature rare to this town — the ring 
dances of the Seistani levies whom I referred to 
recently. On the first occasion the British 
officers here and myself were invited by the levies 
to a tattoo in their barracks. On the second 
occasion the performance was repeated, with 



160 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

variations, in front of the Indian cavalry lines, 
the native officers of the cavalry being our hosts. 
The third occasion took place last night in the 
compound of a private house, and my senses are 
still echoing the hum and bustle of it. The cooks 
were busy all day with great cauldrons of rice 
and slabs and chunks of mutton : the guests 
came in and dined in the compound between 
seven and eight o'clock : the dancing commenced 
at nine. We ourselves appeared on the scen^ at 
about half-past nine and were given seats on the 
verandah facing the brick-paved courtyard, where 
the barefooted Seistanis were already circling in 
the stick-dance. The players stood in the centre, 
and the dancers, each with a baton in his right 
hand, whirled round them in rhythmic order with 
a succession of volte-face movements, each man 
with a series of rapid and graceful steps facing 
round in turn to his neighbour in front and his 
neighbour behind and crossing sticks. You will 
realise that the staccato click of thirty sticks in 
perfect time with each other had a fascination of 
its own, apart from which the dance was one of 
leg movement only, with a surprising symmetry 
and agility in the double progression. The pace 
and vigour increased, and we watched to see 
some one get a hearty crack on the head from his 
neighbour's baton ; but the shots never missed. 

The second item was a solo dance by a young 
Indian who performed a sort of jig with a dagger 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 161 

in each hand. After that two Russian Cossacks 
came on and set to each other, while a third played 
a merry lilting tune on their beloved concertina. 
They span around with a great deal of precise 
posturing, and the neatest of foot-work in their 
black light-soled riding-boots. Occasionally one 
would squat on his haunches and carry on the 
dance in that position for a few steps, and once he 
surprised us by approaching his partner in a rapid 
somersault. These Cossacks never tire of dancing, 
nor we of watching them. 

The next item was a dance by two Persian boys 
of about six years of age, who flitted about for 
a quarter of an hour in a space of twelve feet 
by eight. These little fellows were respectable 
amateurs, very different from the professional 
wriggler known to larger towns. Their bare feet, 
' like little mice, ran in and out ' through a 
marvellous maze of seemingly impromptu figures : 
they fluttered and hung and darted and turned 
after and about each other, their heads always 
erect, their dark eyes shining and their rosy 
cheeks glowing through the dim light of the lamps. 
Their dancing seemed too spontaneous to have 
been studied, and yet was much too intricate and 
artistic to be unrehearsed. It was like two elves 
disporting themselves — but very skilful and in- 
telligent elves. Here was all the poetry of 
motion, innocent of passionate or sentimental 
suggestion, the grace of young things joyously 



162 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

alive. Mozart in his childhood (his lighter music 
suggests it) might have danced like that, but his 
curvettings would have been more formal and 
less rich in cunning and variety ; the ilan, the 
verve, the entrainement of these Persian children 
was more than Gallic. 

Through it all the satyr in the background 
played upon his reed pipe. His face was pitted 
deep with smallpox and yellow with opium- 
smoking, his eyes glazed, void of expression. 
When the dance was over the Seistanis rose and 
began to form a ring round the compound again. 
The player put aside the little pipe which made a 
sound like an oboe, and recommenced with his 
usual instrument, which sounds ver}'' like a 
chanter — a bagpipe without the bag. He puffed 
his cheeks and made a bag of them, breathing 
through his nose while he blew. The sound was 
continuous, and. he never seemed to stop blowing. 
The Seistanis began to circle again — a motley 
circle of turbaned heads, bare feet, baggy trousers, 
and tight waistcoats below which the free tails of 
their white shirts flapped and flew. They had no 
sticks or other accessories this time, and the dance 
was one of free gesture, ample movement, and 
supple flexions. They set to the man in front 
with Schottische steps, spun round, set to the 
man behind, advanced towards the middle, re- 
tired, whirled fantastically, and began over again, 
progressing always round the ring. By this time 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 163 

half the Ughts had been blown out by the night 
breeze : the pace quickened and the scene took 
on a wild and demoniacal aspect : the onlookers 
caught the infection ; some of them entered the 
giddy vortex, and the dance became a medley of 
dim whirling figures with flashes of white shirt- 
tails and loose turban-cloths. 

Finale, presto. The guests departed, and the 
dancers, the players, and the crowd vanished into 
the outer moonlight. Anon came the cry of the 
night - police challenging homegoers, and then 
deep silence, broken later by the howling of cats 
on the roof where the white-robed women had 
watched. 

MiHNEH, 7th June 1917. 
Dear M.,— I left Birjand on the 2nd, probably 
never to return. My chief feeling was one of mild 
relief after a round of good-byes. The Persian is 
often a sentimental creature with the gift of 
abundant speech for suitable occasions. If you 
have known each other well for some years, he 
will realise, as you meet for the last time, that 
here is indeed a minor form of death, and he may 
think it his obligation to say things to you which 
in your own country would only be said at your 
funeral. If he grows pathetic, however, you have 
but to switch him off with a twist of levity, and 
he laughingly runs down the proffered siding, 
taking the hint that neither of you is very deep 



164 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

in the affections of the other, or could ever be in 
the nature of the case. 

One sometimes Hves these last days of sojourn 
in a rarefied atmosphere, with heightened vision. 
The ordinary sights and sounds of daily life are 
noted with quickened perception, and assume a 
new significance when the veil of familiarity is 
about to be withdrawn : a halo of farewell makes 
the commonest things arresting, as the colours of 
sunset work magic in a dull sky. But the pitch 
of sensation was not raised for me at the time of 
leave-taking. I could see nothing but the same 
old egg- top roofs, the same narrow, evil- smelling 
lanes of traffic, the same opium-sodden beggars. 
The song of the Indian troopers taking their 
horses to water, the chant of the bricklayer, the 
evening call to prayer recited by the old man with 
the cracked voice and the little boy with the 
brazen one (each within fifty yards of me and 
paying no attention to each other's periods), the 
nightly bugle-call four hours after sundown, the 
braying of donkeys, the bleating of kids, the 
gurgling of camels, the town-crier announcing 
in loud long-drawn tones that somebody's calf is 
lost, the cry of a neighbour's infant, the laughter 
of veiled women, the evensong of the Cossacks 
lounging across the way, the voice of the toll- 
keeper hailing peasants as they would pass his 
hut, the marching-tunes of the native band, the 
tramp of infantrymen and the staccato sten- 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 165 

torian ' one, two, one — one, two, one ' of the 
perspiring Persian officer, whip in hand, as they 
passed my door in the morning — all these come 
back in an untimely jumble already as indifferent 
and undistinguished as is the faint droning of 
flies in the big room where I am now sitting in a 
village half-way to Meshed. 

I am travelling this time in an open carriage 
with four good horses abreast, guaranteed to take 
me to Meshed in eight days. The driver is a 
Turk from Tabriz in the north-west, and says his 
prayers facing in the wrong direction. He has a 
groom who sits or stands at the back of the carriage. 
The groom's chief characteristic is his ugliness, 
and his chief accomplishment is falling off his 
perch in a deep sleep, waking up later in the road- 
way, and walking in our tracks for the rest of the 
stage. My servant sits beside the driver, and I 
dispose myself among rugs and pillows with my 
feet across the luggage which is packed in the 
body of the carriage. Whiles I reclines and 
sleeps. Whiles I just reclines. So the time 
passes, with seven to eight hours a day driving 
and the rest of the twenty-four in strange lodgings 
which provide much of the hazard and interest of 
the journey. We have had our due of mishap 
already at a place where a dozen gypsies were 
encamped in goats'-hair tents on the outskirts of 
a village. As we passed their encampment on 
our way out after a halt the carriage tilted on a 



166 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

slope, hung for a second, and fell on its side. We 
picked ourselves up from the road and proceeded 
to right matters. The swarthy soft-featured 
gypsy women watched us over a low wall and 
smiled. One of them told us the reason for the 
accident. She had begged alms, it appeared 
(though I had no knowledge of it), and my servant 
had turned her a deaf ear. He thought nothing 
of it, or perhaps considered that the dark people 
had had all the revenge they wanted, for he con- 
tinued to turn the deaf ear. ' I suppose,' I said 
to the driver, ' you don't do this sort of thing 
very often ? ' 'Be assured,' he replied with a 
chuckle ; ' never more than once on a journey. 
We will now get to Meshed safely.' He flicked 
his whip and we started off once more at a trot. 
Before we had gone thirty yards in the narrow, 
uneven roadway the same thing happened again, 
and again we rose from the dust and looked at 
each other and examined the overturned carriage. 
The hood was broken slightly in three places. 
My helmet was bruised into pulp. I was cross 
with the driver, and he with his luck. ' She has 
put the evil eye on us,' said the groom as he 
rubbed his bones. I looked back and saw the 
woman still smiling. . . . ? No, it would be too 
absurd to go back and give her something. She 
laughed lightly and turned away. We got off 
again, and have had no trouble since, so perhaps 
our account is settled. But I am not quite sure. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 167 

and if ever again a gypsy asks me for money — well, 
I hope I shall refuse her. 

At Beidukht I stopped for a few minutes to go 
over a new mosque which is being built to en- 
shrine the remains of Mulla Sultan, the late local 
chief of the Sufi sect — ^the brotherhood of dervishes 
whose district headquarters are here as those of 
the Ismailis are at Sihdeh. The tomb is in the 
centre of the unfinished buildings, and I was about 
to enter the chamber when I saw a woman in 
black crouching beside it, so I came away and 
scrambled onto my rugs and pillows again. 
Beidukht is a poor, ill-favoured place, unworthy 
of such a memorial. 

At Sihdeh I was greeted by a picket of Indian 
cavalry, whose native officer sent me a Punjabi 
curry for lunch. The men regretted that we 
should have no more football together in Birjand, 
and complained of having too little to do with the 
war, so I tried to buoy them up with hopes of an 
early return to India. At the next post we had 
passed the British line and entered the Russian 
' sphere of influence.' As my carriage stopped I 
was consummately stared at by a few Cossaclp, 
one of whom (a solitary Siberian of uncouth bulk, 
with little half-buried eyes) peered at me with his 
hands in his breeches pockets and spat heartily 
the while to show his sense of the new emancipa- 
tion. So far as I have come, there are a dozen or 
more men posted at every stage — big blonde 



168 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

fellows most of them, the picture of rude health. 
They get little news of the war, and that very 
belated, so the few I spoke with were eager for 
the latest I could give them. 

Chinaran, lUh June 1917. 

Dear M.,— Behold me speeding for the Russian 
frontier at the rate of thirty- six miles a day, in the 
same carriage, with the same driver, the Tabrizi 
Turk, who now proclaims himself a Russian 
subject or ' protected person.' This morning I 
left Meshed, where I had spent the last three and 
a half days renewing old acquaintances and mak- 
ing new ones, — English, Russian, Belgian, Ameri- 
can, Persian, Indian, and Armenian — a score of 
people who form a cosmopolitan colony centring 
round the British and Russian consulates. Our 
consulate is a roomy two-storied brick building, 
in the middle of a delightful garden where you 
can play tennis or badminton or croquet in 
surroundings that might do justice to a country 
house in the south of England. You may take 
your tea there on the lawns within a rose-arbour 
or beneath a weeping- willow : the broad verandah 
where you sit in the cool of the evening is marked 
off with a deep border of potted geraniums, and 
your table is decked with dahlias. The tethered 
gazelles grazing beside the lambs in a miniature 
park, the irrigation channels that fringe each 
patch of green, the big almond tree and the great 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 169 

oriental planes in whose tops the crows have 
nested, are barely enough to remind you that you 
are in the East : if they do remind you, it is only 
to awaken in you a comfortable appreciation of 
the fruitful care of those who found and foster 
such oases. 

Meshed has changed much since I last saw it. 
There are new gardens, new houses, new shops, — 
a whole street of them — and a fine new building 
for the post and telegraph offices which would not 
shame any European town. The town square, 
where the band plays and the Persian troops drill 
of a morning, is lined with shady trees and set 
about with flower-beds. Most marvellous to see, 
there is actually a public park where the towns- 
people walk and take the air in the evenings. 
The effect on the town of a garrison of several 
hundred Russian cavalry is manifest in other ways. 
Many of the shops display Russian signs, and the 
Russian language has been rapidly learnt and is 
freely spoken by a large number of all classes 
when they have occasion to use it in their dealings 
with the troops. Politically, these influences 
have recently become dormant. The potent ex- 
penditure of the rouble continues, and the display 
of force is still there, but the revolution in Russia 
has temporarily paralysed their power of action, 
and the thoughts of officers and men alike are 
concerned for the moment with the single question 
of their own future. The Persians in Meshed are 



170 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

very curious about Russia's prospects, and their 
lack of reliable news leads them to spread absurd 
rumours from time to time. They are sym- 
pathetic enough, and hopeful of future relations 
between the two powers and peoples more flatter- 
ing to themselves, but with their own recent 
experience of the results of abrupt conversion 
from despotism to ultra- democratic ideas they 
are naturally somewhat cynical and sceptical as 
to the upshot in Russia. 

The Persian democrats, foiled in their efforts of 
1915-16 to rouse this country in the cause of our 
enemies, have suddenly adopted the desperate 
methods of assassins. In Teheran a band of 
terrorists has been formed who have issued 
notices warning prominent individuals against 
active support of the British and Russian diplo- 
matic representatives. Two such supporters of 
our legations have been murdered in the last fort- 
night, and others have since been threatened for 
the alleged taking of bribes. 

Baku, 22nd June 1917, 
Dear M., — I have reached the fringe of Europe 
once more, and am taking breath for a space after 
a welter of strange faces and unfamiliar speech. 
I wrote you on the 14th from Chinaran. On 
the 15th I passed the night among the poplars 
and willows of Kuchan, a new town built to re- 
place the old one some miles away which was 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 171 

ruined by an earthquake a generation ago and 
still suffers from shocks. On the 16th I reached 
Imam Quli, a green spot which is the home of 
Turki-speaking Kurds, and on the 17th we 
crossed the frontier. 

At the Persian frontier-post our troubles began. 
My passport, with my photograph gummed to it, 
bore the vise of the Russian consul-general in 
Meshed, and was supported by a general letter of 
recommendation from him. My servant had a 
Persian passport also endorsed by the Russians 
and with his photograph attached. The carriage- 
driver had been misinformed and had failed to 
provide himself with a pass of any sort, with the 
result that we were held up for a couple of hours 
while he procured a permit from the agent for 
foreign affairs. This settled, we drove uphill to 
the frontier and downhill to the Russian customs 
post, passing on the way the barracks of the 
Russian frontier guard, where a sentry with fixed 
bayonet stood by the roadside. The carriage 
was unloaded at the customs-house and a cursory 
examination of our belongings was made by a 
sour-faced menial whose severity was tempered 
by the amiable admonitions of a mild-mannered 
clerk. Our passports were checked by this latter, 
who found some difficulty over the carriage- 
horses and had to summon his chief, a blonde 
rugged giant of bluff manner and short speech. 
While awaiting this officer the clerk entertained 



172 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

me with conversation on the war, which he knew 
little about, and the state of Russia, as to which 
he was plaintive. He spoke with a sing-song 
cadence in his voice, a burlesque intonation which 
I find used by many Russians. He seemed to 
blame the revolution for the simple state of his 
office and furniture, which appeared to me 
exactly the same as when I saw the place four 
years ago. 

We parted the best of friends, and I drove on 
to a little village where we passed the night. As 
the carriage stopped, three or four soldiers came 
forward and again demanded my passport and 
requested me to have my luggage opened for 
examination. The non-commissioned officer in 
charge of the post (I took him to be such, though 
I only saw him in shirt and trousers, with his 
braces hanging loose) read my papers, decreed 
that an examination of the luggage was un- 
necessary, led me to a good room and stood in 
the doorway talking till my tea was ready, when 
he said good-bye and disappeared. He had a fair 
skin and fair hair, declared himself a Pole, and 
told me he had been in the fighting at Warsaw. 
Like the customs clerk, he asked me when I 
thought there would be peace, as to which I 
claimed no inside knowledge. At dinner-time 
my servant, Ismail, produced a half-bottle of 
Burgundy which had crossed the frontier with 
me, and which I disposed of with particular 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 173 

relish because the sale of wine is forbidden in 
Russia. 

Next morning we started at 5 o'clock in the 
hope of catching a train which left Askabad at 
11 a.m. according to the customs clerk, and 
at 9.30 according to him of the hanging braces. 
At 8.30 we pulled up at the station after 
passing a common where squads of young 
soldiers were drilling. I now learnt that the 
morning train carried only third-class pas- 
sengers and that the evening train would be at 
5.25, so we drove off again along tree -lined 
avenues to the Orient Hotel. There I engaged 
a room and, going downstairs to pay off my driver 
the Tabrizi Turk, met Ismail coming along the 
corridor looking as if he had seen a ghost, whereas 
all he had seen was the mere suggestion of 
European city life. After that first sight of a 
very ordinary hotel, with maid-servants, un- 
secluded, serving a male public, not even the 
railway nor the steamer could open his eyes so 
wide in shy wonder. 

At Askabad I went first to a barber, and 
afterwards to a Persian bath as there was no 
bathroom in the hotel. The friseur was a lad of 
seventeen or so, who told me he drilled with the 
soldiers twice a week. Later, I breakfasted in 
my room with tea and sugar, eggs and bread. 
As there was no dining-room I decided in an 
unlucky moment to lunch outside, and went 



174 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

accordingly to a restaurant of indifferent quality, 
where I got fish and bread and mineral water, tea 
with sugar being unobtainable, as also alcoholic 
drinks of any kind. While I was there a man left 
the place with very uncertain gait, obviously well 
primed with liquor, the nature of which I didn't 
learn. 

At a little after five I drove to the station and 
found long queues at the booking-offices. I was 
now told that the train, due to arrive at 5.25, 
would leave at 6.30, which it did punctually. I 
commissioned a porter to buy tickets — one first 
and one fourth class. There was no third class, 
and he found that there were no places available 
in first or second. Repeated chases after the 
stationmaster, who, run to earth at last, was all 
smiles and apologies, but could do nothing. The 
porter eventually got me a fourth-class ticket and 
asked the attendant in the dining-car to let me sit 
there for the journey. Ismail was duly given his 
place in the fourth class, in a compartment with 
six sleeping-berths in tiers of three, with my 
luggage piled opposite him on the other side of 
the corridor, where also were two berths placed 
lengthways to the train. His travelling com- 
panions were all soldiers, who took to him at once 
and began to teach him Russian by asking him 
all sorts of questions which he couldn't answer. 
I left him in a circle of popularity, and went to the 
dining-car, where people were drinking beer or tea. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 175 

Later I made the acquaintance of two school- 
boys, aged about sixteen, who were going some 
distance west on hoHday from a gymnase at 
Charsu. A real hve Britisher was a priceless 
curiosity to these lads, who bombarded me with 
questions on all sorts of matters, including the 
details of our military uniform from a field- 
marshal's to a sub-lieutenant's. I asked them if 
they spoke French, and the more voluble of the 
two replied that he had been two years at it and 
couldn't speak a word, but that they knew some 
German. He complained about education in 
Russia, which he said was of no value, and when 
a passenger brushed past his comrade on the 
passage at the end of the car he complained of 
Russian manners. I told him that many an 
English boy could not speak a word of French 
after two years' study, and that many a passenger 
on English trains was lacking in good manners. 
He said that he hoped to become an engineer, and 
would go to America for that end if the war was 
over before his military service was due, scientific 
instruction being hopeless in Russia. ' I hope 
you will go,' said I, 'and come back and put 
matters right in your own country. The future 
depends on you and others like you.' He told 
me he had heard that if Russia made a separate 
peace, England would at once seize Turkestan 
with the help of the Afghans. He imagined that 
Afghanistan swarmed with Englishmen, whereas 



176 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

they have always been prohibited from entering 
that country. The train stopped, and the boys 
rushed me off to see a museum of relics and 
souvenirs of the war with the Turkomans — a 
collection of ordnance, arms and ammunition, 
equipment, battle pictures, and photographs of 
officers. Among the passengers on the train who 
hastened out to view these exhibits was a number 
of Turkoman officers themselves, now subjects of 
Russia — big men of powerful physique, with 
striped red robes, enormous sheep-skin hats over 
their embroidered skull-caps, and daggers stuck 
in their belts. 

The next man I spoke to was a mechanic, an 
employee on the railway, who finding I was a 
foreigner promptly concluded that I must be an 
Austrian prisoner under convoy, but was none 
the less obliging. My third acquaintance was a 
little fair-haired Jew who spoke Persian. He had 
been a buyer of lambskins in Persia for some 
years, but had lost so much money in bad debts 
that he swore never to return to that distressful 
country. After dinner those officers and women 
who had berths in the first or second class retired 
gradually, and there remained three senior officers 
who I found were in the same position as myself — 
passengers with fourth-class tickets who proposed 
to spend the night in the dining-car. With one 
of them, a much- decorated colonel of a Turkestani 
regiment, I had a long conversation principally 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 177 

on the war and the state of Russia. He was 
plaintive, Uke the schoolboys. ' Before the revolu- 
tion my soldiers were like my own children. Look 
at them now ! Discipline has gone and there is 
no sign of its returning. One must ask them to 
do this, and suggest to them to do that, and gently 
request them not to do the other. Punishment 
has been abolished, and of course orders are not 
listened to. The country is in a hopeless con- 
dition. They say that if matters don't improve, 
Japan will step in and take control. What do 
the English say about us ? ' I could only reply 
that the English knew what losses the Russians 
had suffered in the first year of the war and did 
not expect them to make an offensive movement 
till the revolution had boiled down a bit, but 
would be content to see them hold their line. 
This pleased the colonel, who was afraid the 
British, the Japanese, and the Germans between 
them were going to swallow up Russia. His 
apprehensions appeared to be shared by others 
to whom he afterwards quoted his question and 
my reply, much to their relief and my astonish- 
ment. 

At midnight the train stopped at a station 
where we hoped to find places available. There 
proved to be none, and when we returned to the 
dining-car we found it locked against us. The 
colonel foimd a seat somehow, and I stood in the 
corridors for an hour or two and then sought 

M 



178 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Ismail in the fourth-class boxes, where I stretched 
myself on an upper berth with a rug and a pillow. 
The smell of humanity was overpowering, and 
with that and the pig-like snoring of a man in the 
berth alongside, my sleep was rather uneasy. I 
rose again at four o'clock, and shortly afterwards 
I was found lurking in the second-class corridor 
by an inspector who immediately assumed a 
manner and threatened me with a fine. The 
attendant explained my case, and at the next 
station he succeeded in getting me a ticket for a 
second-class berth, where I snatched some more 
sleep. We arrived at Krasnovodsk at about nine 
o'clock, and I got a second-class passage for Baku, 
the first being full. We could not go on board till 
three in the afternoon, and as there is no good 
hotel at Krasnovodsk we spent the whole of the 
intervening time in the dreary big room at the 
station, where I had a satisfactory lunch, but 
could get no newspapers. I was relieved of 
fifteen roubles in all for the simple business of 
taking my luggage from the station, putting it 
on board, and purchasing my tickets, all which 
certainly took a considerable time to accomplish. 
The boat (a converted cargo-boat twenty-nine 
years old, oil-driven with Bolinder engines) 
arrived while we were waiting at the shore end 
of the pier, and some thirty soldiers came off 
burdened with kit, some of them bandaged and 
one or two limping. The courteous colonel, 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 179 

whose very agreeable company I had as far as 
Baku, explained that these latter were sick or 
diseased. ' We have had practically no wounded,' 
said he, ' for many months now.' After the 
soldiers came the civilians — a motley lot of Jews, 
Turks, Persians, Tatars, Russians, Armenians, 
and what not. The embarking passengers were 
then allowed through the pier gate, soldiers first 
again. 

We were given a good evening meal between 
five and six, when the amiable colonel was kept 
busy persuading three women that the sea was 
calm (which was perfectly true), that they would 
not be sea-sick (which was probable), and that on 
the Black Sea whither they were bound they would 
not be torpedoed (which was at least possible). 
At nine o'clock I had a glass of tea with brown 
bread provided by the company, with sugar pro- 
vided by myself, and jam contributed by a fellow- 
passenger — a government clerk wearing gold 
shoulder-straps and standing about six feet five 
in his shoes. With him and the colonel I had an 
interesting confabulation for an hour or more 
before we retired for the night. They were both 
very deprecatory when speaking about their 
country, astonishingly like Persians in that re- 
spect, and to a point of illogical childishness. 
' Have some more tea,' said the clerk. ' No 
more, thank you. I don't usually drink tea at 
night, and might not sleep after it.' ' Ah ! there 



180 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

now ! Look at the system of the Enghsh,' said 
the colonel. ' We Russians drink tea at any hour 
and to any extent, and then we go to bed with 
troubled heads. We do everything like that. 
You others know what is good for you and keep 
to it.' I thought of my cabin companion, a mild 
young Russian civilian with glasses and a straw 
helmet, who told me at dinner that he never ate 
meat or smoked tobacco, on principle. 

We arrived next morning at Baku, where three 
hydroplanes were circling in the bay. I found my 
way to the Hotel d'Europe, which is frequented 
by the Americans and the British in the town 
— ^the British colony numbering about fifty. 
Baku is not a pretty port, and I was anxious to 
leave it as soon as possible, so I was not cheered 
by the announcement that owing to new regula- 
tions I should probably have to remain for three 
weeks, particularly as I found that bare living in 
the hotel (where there was abundance of food) 
cost thirty roubles a day, and that there was noth- 
ing to be seen or done. This morning, however, 
being the third day of my stay, I went to the 
prefect armed with papers, and obtained from him 
after some demur the necessary permission for 
myself and my servant. We are to leave Baku 
this evening by a paddle steamer for the Persian 
port of Enzeli. 

Baku is perfectly quiet, but on every hand 
I hear the same story of disorganisation and 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 181 

paralysis. I find, for instance, that telegrams 
to England are delayed for any time up to a 
month, and mails take at least six weeks ; that 
the local papers have very little news and the 
Moscow and Petrograd papers arrive a fortnight 
old ; that it is almost impossible for me to send 
money to London ; that the soldiers are idle and 
the hospitals empty of all but sick ; that the sale 
of wine is absolutely prohibited, but is carried on 
by devious methods. The newspapers are still 
full of speeches and appeals, and every one seems 
extremely vocal and extremely inactive. Some 
of the few English people I have met are frankly 
intolerant, and when the situation is referred to 
they dispose of it in one or two trenchant ex- 
pressions in the typical manner, and wish them- 
selves elsewhere. 

Resht, 2Uh June 1917. 

Dear M., — I wrote you two days ago from Baku, 
since when I have escaped from Europe and all 
its works and reached Persia again — a haven of 
comparative quiet. We boarded the steamer at 
seven in the evening, left an hour later, and dined 
at 9.30, by which time I had made the acquaint- 
ance of a young Russian consular official travel- 
ling to Resht, and a Persian of about thirty-two 
who was returning from London after six years 
abroad, spent mostly in Switzerland, where he 
had been studying law at the Geneva university. 



182 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

The boat was full of soldiers who swarmed onto 
the decks fore and aft and amidships, crowded 
and jostled themselves into some sort of com- 
panionable comfort, lay down, and went to sleep. 
The more wakeful of them sat littering their 
surroundings with the shells of pistachio nuts, and 
a few mounted to the promenade deck above, 
where they passed a breezy rainy night. The 
men carried no arms : they were all bound for 
the Kermanshah front, and they all looked 
thoroughly fit. They behaved in the quietest 
possible manner, without any stir or bustle, 
talking to each other in subdued tones and with 
their rugged faces rarely lit by a smile or a sign 
of animation. The officers on board, so far as I 
saw, paid not the least attention to their men, 
nor did the men trouble their officers. 

The Persian returning from London told me 
there were a score of Persians to his knowledge 
now there, and the same number in Switzerland, 
which before the war harboured some hundreds. 
The Persians in Europe, he said, had mostly gone 
back to Persia since 1914, and the majority of 
them were democrats. ' Which means that they 
are hostile to England and Russia ? ' ' Yes,' he 
assented. ' Where is So-and-so ? ' I asked, nam- 
ing a former friend of mine who had been very 
pro-British. ' He is now in Berlin,' was the reply : 
' I had a letter from him not long ago.' I won- 
dered what might be the implication of that 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 183 

letter, but I said nothing. It is a state of affairs 
that doesn't encourage conversation. 

We arrived at Enzeli eighteen hours after 
leaving Baku. As the steamer drew alongside 
I saw the wharf lined with several hundred 
Russian soldiers without arms or equipment. 
' Where are they going ? ' I asked. ' Nowhere. 
They are simply passing the time.' Our pass- 
ports were checked and returned to us, and I left 
the boat, having already commissioned a man 
to engage me a carriage. On the way to the 
customs-house, my things being carried by sailors, 
I attracted two other well-wishers. My passport 
became once more and for the last time an object 
of interest, after which my luggage was partly 
examined by a petty officer of the Russian navy. 
The three men who had attached themselves to 
me engaged three others to carry my luggage 
thirty yards, and the six of them, with much loud- 
voiced discussion, bestowed it in and behind the 
cab. I had to tip eight men for doing the work 
of three, but I made little objection, being glad 
to find myself on Persian soil again. The two- 
horse rubber-tyred carriage drove off, and for 
three hours we bowled along through what was 
to my eyes, parched with the arid landscapes of 
the Persian plateau, the most delightful scenery 
— sub-tropical jungle and woodland alternating 
with stretches of bright green paddy-fields where 
the transplanted rice grew under water in sym- 



184 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

metrical rows within minutely divided areas, 
while at intervals we passed stretches of succulent 
pasture where foals wandered and cattle grazed 
in large numbers. The altitude throughout was 
very little above the level of the Caspian Sea, and 
the mild air was heavy with moisture which was 
balm to my nostrils. 

The way was marked with signposts in Russian, 
and the motor-wagons and cars and one-horse 
carts which passed us frequently were a sufficient 
reminder that this was Russia's military high- 
way leading to Hamadan, Kermanshah, and the 
Turkish frontier. We stopped half-way to rest 
the horses, and my servant, Ismail, fetched me a 
glass of tea from the ' coffee '-shop. Ismail had 
recovered his normal self by now, and his face was 
lit up with a happy smile of relief and satisfaction 
as if he had just returned from a prolonged and 
painful exile. ' There wasn't enough sugar in 
Russia, but here they give you too much,' said he, 
as if to put the matter in a nutshell. ' Well,' I 
said, ' you needn't have let them half fill my 
glass with sugar. In Russia I was your servant 
at times, but now the position has reverted.' 
' Sarkar,' said he, ' I was ashamed beyond words 
before my master in Russia, being so helpless and 
useless in a strange land. I thank God that is 
finished. And if that is really Russia that we 
have been through in the last week — well, I am 
the slave of Persia for ever.' ' I have already told 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 185 

you,' I said, ' that Eastern Russia is not Russia 
proper, and that Eastern Russia in war-time and 
during a period of revolution is a very different 
thing from Europe in times of peace.' ' Did you 
see that tradesman in Krasnovodsk,' he asked, 
' who cuffed that poor porter till his nose bled ? 
When I was on the boat,' he went on with only 
apparent irrelevance, ' a soldier beside me had 
some trouble with his neighbour, a man of humble 
position. He beat him unmercifully till the poor 
fellow cried, and no one made any objection. 
The soldiers as a rule, though, were very quiet and 
didn't trouble any one, and the Russians in the 
streets of Baku were just the same, and went 
about their own business. But whenever I left 
the hotel at Baku I was repeatedly accosted by 
impertinent Caucasian Turks, who wanted me to 
answer all sorts of questions about myself. They 
worried me to death, giving me no peace, so that 
I gave up walking in the streets. When a man is 
in a foreign land he should be going about and 
seeing the sights, but I could only sit on the floor 
in the room, like a deaf and dumb fool, absolutely 
miserable.' 

Ismail, you see, had suffered the loss of some 
illusions about European civilisation, of which he 
had just skirted the borders. He had always 
been told that Europe was a long way ahead of 
Asia in everything, and like any ignorant country- 
man he drew the wrong conclusions. He ex- 



186 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

pected more spaciousness, more ease and comfort, 
and he found jostling crowds and unceasing noise. 
He conceived vaguely of a higher form of human- 
ity, with more refinement of conduct, more 
courtesy of intercourse, more nobility and grace 
of aspect in matter and in man. Reckoning his 
impressions by such a standard of value, he found, 
of course, but little to admire or emulate, par- 
ticularly when I warned him against casual rogues 
and exorbitant shopkeepers in the streets of Baku. 
I am confident, therefore, that he will remain a 
true son of Iran, reassured of the superior merits 
and attractiveness of his own country, while 
admitting, for the sake of argument, the advan- 
tages of swift locomotion, and the initial pleasure 
of such minor facilities as obtaining an unlimited 
supply of good and clean water by simply turning 
a mysterious tap. 

Teheean, 30th June 1917. 

Dear M., — I left Resht on the morning of the 
25th, in a tyreless landau with four post-horses 
abreast. The following afternoon we arrived at 
Kazvin, where I stopped for the night, leaving 
again the next day after lunch. At two o'clock 
on the 28th I finally drew up in Teheran, where 
my journeying is over for the time being. As 
usual, I find that my heavy luggage, which had 
been sent on by the direct route from Meshed 
three or four weeks ago, has neither arrived nor 
been heard of. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 187 

From Resht to Teheran the road is a good one, 
metalled where necessary, and without the bumps 
and hazards to which I have grown accustomed 
in other parts of the country. The horses are 
changed every three hours or so, and the traveller 
may occasionally be delayed an hour or two wait- 
ing for fresh relays, but he is otherwise free to 
continue his journey night and day if he likes, at 
an average pace of five and a half miles an hour. 
The rich alluvial land of the fiat coast-belt, 
with dense forest-growth broken at intervals by 
rice fields, continues for seven or eight hours from 
Resht, gradually giving way to less luxuriant 
country as the road rises to the uplands. The 
air becomes cooler, drier, and more invigorating, 
and one suddenly finds oneself back among the 
naked hills, the scanty pastures, and the sterile 
stretches which characterise the whole plateau of 
Persia. 

On the way to Kazvin I met many military 
transport carts, and some three hundred Russian 
soldiers (among them a few junior officers) re- 
turning on foot and in motor-lorries to the front 
of war. They had no arms or equipment beyond 
in some cases a small haversack, and when at one 
point half a dozen of them gathered round my 
cigarette case, one of them, in answer to my ques- 
tion, asked me how I could expect them to have 
cigarettes when they had insufficient bread even. 
They all bore themselves with the same subdued, 



188 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

almost stolid air that I had remarked in the 
soldiers on the railway and on the Caspian Sea — 
the air of normally strong men browbeaten by fate 
and looking to suffer still. At Kazvin, where the 
highway to Hamadan and Kermanshah branches 
off, I lost sight of these men, and thereafter the 
level road, which skirts the Elburz range of 
mountains till it finally crosses the now hot and 
dusty plain to Teheran, was deserted of all but 
post- wagons and a few road-carriages and mule 
caravans of merchandise. 

I had been warned of many changes in the 
capital since I left it eight years ago, but the old 
types and the old landmarks drew my attention 
much more than the fresh veneer of advancing 
civilisation which has been streaked over the 
town. The club maintained by the European 
colony is more prosperous than of old, and there 
is a new Imperial Club for Persians and Europeans, 
founded principally for sports but now more noted 
for card-playing. There are two or three hotels 
which deserve the name rather more than some 
of their predecessors did. New buildings and 
new shops have improved a few of the main 
streets, which are now better cared for : the central 
square, where the same old muzzle-loader cannon 
repose, is lit at night with arc lights. The tradi- 
tional thirst- quenching British hospitality comes 
over one with the same flow and variety as in 
former days of peace, which is surprising in view 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 189 

of the state of traffic with Europe and India. 
There are minor alleviations, such as the possi- 
bility of visiting a barber's shop instead of send- 
ing, as we used to do, for a black-frocked person 
who, with blunt scissors (and a blunter machine, 
of which he was very proud), made strange cryptic 
patterns on one's head if his artistic instinct was 
not carefully controlled. The brightest feature 
of the street to the newcomer is unquestionably 
the Persian gendarme, the chaste elegance of 
whose uniform, in striking contrast to the sombre 
and floppy dress of the people, arrests the eye 
repeatedly on every line of traffic. 

The various legations desert the town for the 
summer, and are now established in their usual 
country quarters six or seven miles to the north 
towards the mountains, where are also most of 
the British bank and telegraph staffs and other 
European residents. There are several Swedish 
officers in charge of the gendarmerie and the 
police. The latter force appears to be under good 
control : the chief of police is at the moment 
engaged in tracking down members of the ever- 
increasing society of terrorists whose avowed object 
is the assassination of Anglophile, Russophile, 
and reactionary Persians. Their latest victim is 
the treasurer-general of Persia, who by all 
accounts was little deserving of murder. Whether 
these assassins will be fitly dealt with by the 
Persian authorities is at present a matter of 



190 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

doubt, the men being regarded by many Persians 
as patriots, misguided at worst. 

Hamadan, 22nd July 1917. 

Dear M.,— Your letters of 18th March and 25th 
April reached me in Teheran, and you may 
imagine how welcome they were as it was a full 
month since I had had any home news. It is good 
to know that everything is unchanged, or was 
three months ago, and that P. R.'s talism (which 
is the Persian for a mascot) still serves him well. 
I notice that you have stopped speculating and 
ruminating about the war, which seems to have 
become almost a natural state of existence with 
you all. I suppose that during demobilisation 
and thereafter you will lose the new habits as 
gradually as they have been acquired. You get 
little news from this part of the world, it seems : 
Persia is certainly a backwater at present, and 
has dropped quite out of importance since the 
capture of Baghdad. I found, for instance, that 
there were practically no press correspondents at 
the capital, and that Renter's news agency was 
being run by some one in his spare time. I see, 
by the way, from your last letter that my tele- 
gram from Birjand took a fortnight to reach you. 

I left Teheran on the 5th after a stay of a week, 
returning on my tracks as far as Kazvin. My 
Birjandi servant, Ismail, left the day before to 
return to his family, much to my regret, as the boy 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 191 

had given me loyal service for four years. From 
experience, however, I knew that he would not be 
happy out of his own province, so I had perforce 
to find another man. I have engaged for the 
rest of my journey a boy of twenty- three or so 
who enlisted some years ago in the gendarmerie 
and disliked it so much that he shot himself in 
the hand to obtain his discharge. The only other 
recommendation he had was from some one who 
took him on as cook and dismissed him for 
exorbitant accounts of expenditure after a fort- 
night. He is a capable fellow and hasn't broken 
out with me so far, so perhaps his wild oats have 
been sown. 

From Teheran to Kazvin I had an energetic 
travelling companion who made the short journey 
anything but tedious. We were delayed repeat- 
edly by jaded horses, and at one point where the 
driver halted to refresh himself and the animals 
within an hour of our next stage, my friend lost 
his patience, mounted to the driver's seat, used 
the whip and the reins till his hands were blistered, 
shouted and swore till his voice was hoarse, and 
brought us in triumph to our stage in the small 
hours of night, while the wretched little driver was 
left to follow on foot with his post-boy's saddle 
over his arm. At another point where we halted 
at lunch time a Russian orderly took us to a good 
room, gave us tumblers of tea and fresh white 
bread, and entertained us with stories of the 



192 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

taking of Erzerum, at which he had been present. 
The lad had received four or five shrapnel wounds 
in the course of his campaigning, and had some- 
thing to tell of hardships, but he was very cheerful 
and active in spite of it all. 

At Kazvin I engaged a fresh post-carriage for 
Hamadan, and started off again on the afternoon 
of the 8th, arriving here on the 10th after forty-four 
hours' travelling. The road is a good metalled one 
throughout, though its surface has been loosened 
by traffic and drought. I was provided with 
papers of introduction from our attache at 
Teheran and from the Russian consul at Kazvin, 
but found no use for them, as the only Russians I 
spoke with were some soldiers at the hot springs 
beyond the third stage, who were waiting their 
turn, like myself, for a bathe in the little covered 
tank in the rock through which the hot water 
comes bubbling up. The people at the posting- 
stations, as we approached the Hamadan district, 
spoke Turki amongst themselves and had very 
little knowledge of Persian. At the second stage 
out we reached the north-western corner of the 
great plain on the edge of which lie Kazvin and 
Teheran, and thereafter we rose into cooler hill- 
country. As we drew near Hamadan the valleys 
and villages had an increasing air of fertility and 
prosperity, and for the last three stages I rested 
my eyes at more frequent intervals on smiling 
fields and gardens. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 193 

Some fifteen miles from town my carriage 
passed a zigzag line of trenches intersecting the 
roadway. They marked the limit of the Turkish 
advance in August 1916, after which time 
Hamadan remained in Turkish hands until the 
fall of Kut el Amara and our advance on Baghdad 
in early March 1917. (The advance towards 
Teheran by the Persian gendarmerie and Kurdish 
and other irregulars in March 1915 got as far as 
Aveh, four stages west of Kazvin on this same road, 
where they were met by the main Russian forces.) 
On my way from Kazvin to Hamadan I passed a 
certain amount of ambulance and supply trans- 
port, and a few parties of troops, but not till I saw 
those trenches near the town did I realise that I 
was on the verge of an actual and recent scene of 
war. There was in that realisation something of 
the elation of the archaeologist, uplifted by the 
communicative virtues of the visible symbols of 
past greatness : there was more of the pilgrim's 
wondering pride, the sense of privilege ; for here, 
indeed, was holy ground, in direct kinship, how- 
ever humble, with the glorious fields of France, and 
alike consecrated to a cause that is older than man. 
Yet as I entered Hamadan I reflected that this 
was no mere scene of half-forgotten martjrrdom, 
where the pilgrim, in the joy of arrival and 
shadowy attainment, kisses the tomb and goes 
his way again : rather I had reached but the 
portico of the theatre, and within, behind those 

N 



194 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

doors ahead of me, the play was still upon the 
stage. 

The town of Hamadan stands on the edge of a 
comparatively well-watered plain over 6000 feet 
above sea-level, which I may remind you is much 
higher than the highest mountain in Britain. 
Behind it to the west the ground rises without a 
break to a great range of mountains across which 
runs the road to Kermanshah. The peaks of 
Alvand, over 12,000 feet high, are only three or 
four miles distant from the narrow and tortuous 
ways of the Hamadan bazaars, where Persian, 
Turk and Kurd, Jew and Armenian pit themselves 
and their varieties of cunning against each other in 
the business of buying and selling. The lower 
slopes, and the plain itself, are dotted with villages 
buried in groves and gardens of poplar and willow 
and fruit trees. Most of the summer crops have 
already been harvested, but here and there the 
yellow wheat is still standing, and the grape in 
the walled vineyards is not yet ripe. 

The house where I am hospitably lodged during 
my sojourn in Hamadan was occupied throughout 
last autumn and winter by Ali Ihsan Bey, the 
Turkish commander. My present host left it at 
three o'clock in the morning of the 9th of August 
1916, after removing what valuables he could, and 
thirteen hours later the Turks were in possession 
of the town, which the Russians re-entered on the 
2nd of March of this year. When the Russians 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 195 

and the British residents evacuated Hamadan in 
August they left behind them a few members of 
the American Presbyterian Mission, who re- 
mained here as neutral subjects throughout the 
period of Turkish occupation. These missionaries, 
and the townspeople themselves, have retained, 
on the whole, a favourable impression of the be- 
haviour of the Turkish troops, who destroyed or 
took away with them of European civilian pro- 
perty only what military necessities dictated : 
the cutting- down of much valuable timber, for 
instance, is excused by the severity of the winter 
at this altitude. The baneful German influence 
was more or less absent, as it appears that with 
the exception of a score of subordinate officers 
there were no Germans with the Turkish troops, 
who openly declared their dislike of Teutonic 
domination. 

A few days ago we took tea at the Russian 
headquarters, where the commander-in-chief sat 
at one end of the long mess table, with a priest at 
the other end and a number of officers on either 
side. General B. is a Cossack officer of middle 
height, with an air of impregnable health and 
inexhaustible energy which report confirms. The 
only wrinkles on his handsome face are at the 
corners of his eyes, where he smiles. He is noted 
for felicitous speech- making and for inspiring 
vigour and confidence in his men. The Cossacks, 
by the way, appear to have preserved their 



196 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

military spirit and their loyalty to their officers 
undamped by the revolution, and they provide 
an invaluable stiffening to the forces which are 
now north and west of this base. 

The inhabitants of this town of neutral Persia 
seem to have suffered little from their experience 
of warfare and successive occupation by oppos- 
ing armies. When the Turks entered, their 
commander spoke in person from the pulpit of 
the principal mosque, and announced that as 
Hamadan was now Turkish territory the people 
must respect and even follow the Sunni ritual 
and observances of their brother Mohammedans. 
The order was obeyed in public, and the people 
welcomed the conquerors with presents. As 
time passed the Turks became less friendly. The 
local capitalists were eased of part of their wealth 
by tactful methods, and Turkish notes were forced 
on the bazaar at a fictitiously high rate of exchange 
for Persian money. The Turks introduced Per- 
sian coin minted by our enemies, and it is said that 
they were on the point of redeeming with local 
currency the Turkish gold disbursed by them, 
when they were forced to fly. The astute local 
traders, nevertheless, have contrived in many 
cases to amass fortunes, particularly since the 
return of the Russians, though the continued 
depreciation of Russian paper money means heavy 
loss to holders of this doubtful form of wealth. 
The rouble note, now at a fifth of its value in 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 197 

peace time, is exchanged for coin by the British 
bank and by Jewish and Persian petty financiers, 
not to mention the branch of the Russian bank 
itself. 

At present the townspeople are suffering from 
nocturnal robberies more than from anything else. 
Every night since my arrival I have heard shots 
fired in the town or in our own neighbourhood, 
and always in the morning one is regaled with 
widely-varying stories of the adventure which 
befell some unfortunate householder or belated 
pedestrian. Little or no attempt is made to catch 
and punish these armed robbers, and the sport, in 
consequence, is becoming increasingly popular 
with malcontents and bad characters, whose only 
stock-in-trade is a revolver and a grievance. 

I hope to move on in a week or two, so I have 
been doing the sights of Hamadan. One of them 
is a mound overlooking the town, on which are 
remains of an ancient citadel. Another is a lion 
couchant, of colossal size, which guards an emi- 
nence on the outskirts to the south-east. The figure 
has been well chiselled, but snow and rain have 
played for so long on its soft sandstone that the 
detail has been worn away and the poor animal 
is pitted with big rain-holes along his back. The 
face is worn almost smooth, but the lion's present 
claim to distinction lies thereon, for while the rest 
of its body and the surrounding earth may be ab- 
solutely dry, its face is always wet and oleaginous. 



198 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

The affection is no mere chronic catarrh, but 
rather a perpetual perspiration which commences 
as high as the forehead. The cause of it I might 
leave to geologists and mystics to settle between 
them, but, as a matter of fact, it appears to 
concern neither. The lion's face is said to be 
rubbed with oil by women of the neighbourhood 
whose married life has not borne fruit. 

Another of the sights is the reputed tombs of 
Esther and Mordecai, enshrined in the centre of 
the town within a domed building of economical 
proportions, the entrance to which is by a small 
and very heavy stone door of the type used in 
many an old fort. The guardian of this place of 
pilgrimage is an aged Jew, who will show you the 
carved and inscribed walnut cenotaphs of Xerxes' 
Jewish queen and her scheming uncle, and will 
point out to you the place overhead where hung 
the crown of Esther till it was stolen a little while 
ago — some say by the custodian himself. The old 
man lifts a circular stone in the floor between the 
two cenotaphs, and you see below a wick light 
which is kept ever burning, like the Zoroastrian 
fire. You may peer through this man-hole, or 
even go down it if you like, and speculate on what 
lies there in the dim light. 

Elsewhere, by the river's edge in a mean 
quarter of the town, is the tomb of Abu Ali, 
known to Renaissance Europe and to ourselves as 
Avicenna, the great philosopher and doctor of 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 199 

medicine who lived and wrote in Bukhara and in 
Persia proper nine hundred years ago, under the 
patronage of successive and rival princes who gave 
him no peace till, like many an honest fellow of 
those days, he died of good living. His tomb is 
fitly guarded by an unkempt and ragged dervish, 
and is a haunt of that fraternity. The stone 
cenotaph of Avicenna lies by that of his beloved 
master, within a railed-off area in a little room 
which the Turks (be it said in their favour) re- 
floored with tiles during their occupation of Hama- 
dan last winter. The little garden in front of the 
simple building is planted with trees and flowers. 

Kermanshah, 16th August 1917. 

Dear M., — I left Hamadan on the morning of 
the 9th, and got here on the afternoon of the 11th. 
There is no post service of horses, so I hired a 
droshky with three horses for the price of twenty 
pounds, to take myself and my servant and as 
much baggage as it would hold. We started at 
eight o'clock, and rattled over the cobbles through 
the town and by a stony road along the edge of 
the plain, making for the Asadabad pass, which 
we reached about midday. A short halt re- 
freshed the animals and ourselves, and then up 
we went by a zigzag course, and down the other 
side, stopping for tea at a pleasant stream above 
Asadabad, where the smell of opium from the 
coffee-shop alongside added itself to the flavour 



200 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

of my biscuits. Asadabad we reached at six 
o'clock, and at half-past seven we drew up for the 
night in the same plain at a small village called 
Nusratabad, beyond which the horses could not 
go. There I was lodged on the broad roof of a 
serai, where I dined and slept. Off again at four- 
thirty, with a pause for a glass of tea at six, and a 
stop at Kangavar for breakfast between eight and 
ten o'clock : on by a second long pass to Sahneh, 
with a line of trenches at one spot on the east side 
of the pass and the great rock mass of Bisitun 
confronting us in the distance as we made the 
descent. 

The limestone range which runs right away to 
the Kermanshah plain starts abruptly from the 
earth at Bisitun. As seen from above Sahneh the 
mountain, with a nearer peak thrown against it, 
assumes the contours of a recumbent human 
figure, with the face upwards and the knees raised. 
At its feet is a stretch of level land through 
which a river runs. From the knees to the feet of 
the figure is a steep drop of some thousands of 
feet, and on the ankles, as it were, are the bas- 
reliefs and engraved records of Darius the Great. 
It is a fit but daring spot for the memorial tablets 
of Persia's greatest king, and the sublime aspect 
of nature's work, with its startlingly human sug- 
gestion as seen from above Sahneh, affects the 
imagination, as I found, more than the famous 
figures of the king and his king-captives, and the 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 201 

recital of his achievements, that were laboriously 
scratched within a cleft above the mountain's 
base a matter of two thousand five hundred years 
ago. Yet it was the thought of those inscriptions, 
and the hope of a pleasant camping-ground, that 
impelled me on from the village of Sahneh, where 
normally we should have spent the night. 

We drove on accordingly at six o'clock, and at 
eight o'clock we were rolling in the gathering 
darkness along the sandy, dusty track with the 
mountain mass looming ahead of us apparently 
within half an hour's distance. Half-past eight, 
nine o'clock, and half-past nine found us still 
following a straight line for our goal, which 
seemed no nearer. The horses were tired, the 
going was heavy, and the driver lost the main 
track and found himself more than once at a loose 
end in the scrub. We passed two or three ham- 
lets, from which came not a sign or sound of life, 
the inhabitants having fled within the past year 
from the ravages of warring troops. Eventually 
we skirted a hill, threaded our way among boul- 
ders, jolted over a cobble-paved bridge guarded by 
Russian sentries, made towards the sound of 
barking dogs that indicated the village, and woke 
the sleeping population at the hour of ten-thirty 
to demand a night's lodging. 

My hopes of a pleasant camping-ground by 
a clear spring were rudely dashed, and I had 
perforce to accept what offered in a caravanserai 



202 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

full of wagons and mules and loads and sleeping 
muleteers. ' Put me on a roof,' I said to the 
keeper of the serai, ' where I shall be freer of 
sandflies and other insects.' ' The sahib would 
escape the noise and the crowding,' said my ser- 
vant. ' The sahib wants to wake up in the 
morning and see the mountain in front of him,' 
said my intelligent droshkychi. ' Wullah,' said 
the keeper of the serai, * you can see for yourself 
that the rooms are uninhabitable. The roof is 
damaged and there is no proper approach to it. 
The soldiers have left no timbers anywhere.' 
' Then,' said I, ' remove that old opium-smoker 
with the crutches, and bring a broom and clean 
the floor of this platform by the doorway, and we 
will make shift.' My bed was put out, and I 
dined on patties and cold joint and native bread, 
and went promptly to sleep in my clothes with 
a towel over my face and hands, and with mules 
munching and muleteers snoring a couple of 
yards off. The Russians were in occupation of 
a good big serai a stone-throw away, but I had 
had no mind to disturb them at that hour, and the 
horses were better where they were. 

I slept comfortably, and woke after dawn to 
find the caravan gone and the place deserted and 
silent. My morning cup of tea was soon ready, 
and after a wash I went with a villager to view 
the records of the Great King who ruled from 
Thrace to Central Asia, from Egypt to the Indus. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 203 

They are wonderful in truth, these records, but 
little enough to gaze upon in sober everyday 
sense, and unsuited in most respects for com- 
parison with the astounding architectural and 
sculptural glories of Persepolis, where Darius 
and his heirs kept state in the days of Persia's 
greatness. My disappointment was keen, but no 
keener, perhaps, than what I felt on my return 
to the village when my servant told me he could 
get no eggs for breakfast. Could the irreverent 
importunity of mere appetite go further ? Yet 
I have seen good folks at home eating buns in a 
cathedral they had come far to visit. 

I now discovered that the * old opium-smoker 
with the crutches,' who had painfully made way 
for me overnight, was a young villager who had 
been bitten in the foot a month before by a snake. 
The poor fellow's foot was in a bad way, but he 
bore his trouble well, and I was glad to make some 
practical amends for having disturbed him and 
mistaken his character in the dark. It is dis- 
tressing to the traveller in a country like this, to 
be appealed to by victims of accident or disease 
and to be unable to help them with skilled treat- 
ment or advice. I was relieved therefore to learn 
that this man was being treated by a Russian 
army surgeon temporarily stationed on the spot. 

We left Bisitun at eight o'clock, paused an hour 
later at Hajiabad (where half a dozen donkey-men 
were seated round a spring breakfasting on stale 



204 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

barley bread steeped in water), and pulled up 
about ten-thirty at a spacious coffee-shop where 
breakfast was obtainable on rather more sump- 
tuous lines. The serving-lad took me on to the 
roof and showed me the town of Kermanshah, 
eight miles away, running in a long line from 
the plain up to the hills. The upper end was all 
gardens and tall trees. ' That is Dil-Gusha at 
the top,' he explained : ' the British consul and 
the British bank manager live between there and 
the town.' ' Bah bah ! ' said I, ' it is well named 
Heart-Expanding. And what a fine fertile plain 
you have ! ' ' Yes, and along that southern hill- 
side there are a few more little villages hidden.' 
' But where are the flocks ? ' ' There are some,' 
he answered, pointing to several hundred sheep 
and goats grazing towards the northern range. 
' There are fewer now than there used to be. 
The Russians eat them all.' ' And is there game 
in the hills ? ' ' Yes, yes, there are wild sheep 
and ibex. You can see them sometimes from 
here even. The men say they have seen them. 
But there are many robbers in the mountains.' 

I continued my journey after midday over the 
flat and dusty road, across the bridge of the 
Karasu river, and up past the town and into the 
garden quarter. Kermanshah, my journey's end, 
lay clustered on and around a hill that rose from 
the opening of the valley. The town mass on the 
little hill reminded me of Birjand. The fertile 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 205 

plain below and beyond it reminded me of Isfahan. 
The valley of which we were climbing the eastern 
slope looked fair and promising. 

My dusty carriage rumbled past a pair of 
broken-down gate pillars, along an avenue of 
young poplars with a stubble-field on the left and 
some acres of melons and lucerne on the right, 
through an attractive gateway with the Union 
Jack over it and a few Persian soldiers on guard, 
and up a sloping, curving drive to a solid-looking 
bungalow of white brick, where it deposited my 
dusty self on a gravel front among beds of sun- 
flowers and marigolds and asters and cosmos. 

Kermanshah, 21st October 1917. 

Dear M., — Your letters are still coming through 
Russia — very irregularly, of course, and much 
belated, as the state of that country grows more 
and more disturbed. I have had only two or 
three mails since I wrote you a couple of months 
ago. The consul has arranged for his mail bag 
to be sent up from Basra across country through 
Pushtikuh by foot messenger or on mule-back 
about every ten days, so if you address your 
letters care of the political officer at Ali Gharbi, 
Mesopotamia, they will come up with his — 
perhaps. 

Kermanshah is a pleasant spot, three or four 
times as big as Birjand, and much more interest- 
ing in many ways, though I miss the congenial 



206 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

friendliness of the simple folk in that quiet back- 
water. The townspeople here are mainly of the 
blood of the Kurds, a race of tribes quite foreign 
to the Aryan types of Central Persia. The Kurd 
is a fine fellow in his native hills, but his town 
cousin is an unhealthy-looking person suggestive 
of licence and impurity. The sharp-featured 
women are too sallow to be beautiful : the broad 
skulls, high cheek-bones, and olive eyes of the men 
are finished off in too soft-mouthed and womanish 
a fashion to be handsome. They dress in dark 
colours and are partial to loose garments and 
baggy trousers. The men's black felt headgear 
would make a sensation at a Covent Garden or 
Chelsea ball : it is flat and circular on top, con- 
cave all round the sides, and very, very large. 
There are about a thousand Sunnis in the town, the 
rest of its sixty thousand inhabitants being Shi'eh 
Mohammedans, with the exception of some fifteen 
hundred Jews. There are half a dozen families 
of Chaldeans and one or two Armenians. The 
present acting-governor is a Jew converted to 
Islam. The chief customs officer is a Belgian : 
the chief revenue officer is a member of a local 
family of princelings — a man who is no more 
conspicuous for honesty than is the average 
member of the official classes. 

The town has been of military interest and 
importance to us since Turkey entered the war. 
From the first it was the point of entry for 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 207 

German emissaries to Persia and Afghanistan. 
The enemy opened his eastward movement by a 
few bars of friendly intercourse with the Kurdish 
chiefs on the frontier. The chiefs discovered a 
new means of getting money easily and quickly, 
and the German emissaries sowed the seeds of 
hostility to us and the Russians while our political 
representatives were asleep round the corner. 
The first-fruits of this policy were seen in mid- 
April 1915, when the British bank was closed and 
the staff left for Hamadan. In August 1915 the 
European colony, escorted by forty-five Russian 
and Persian Cossacks, attempted to return, but 
their road was barred half-way by one Schune- 
mann with a bobbery pack of four hundred men 
and two machine-guns, and the attempt was not 
pressed. On 23rd February 1916 the Turks and 
their Persian supporters were defeated by the 
Russians at Bid-i-Surkh, and Kermanshah was 
entered immediately afterwards. The bank was 
opened again on 6th March, only to be closed for 
the second time on 28th June, the Russian troops 
retiring before a superior force of Turks who 
entered the town on 1st July. The Turks 
remained in occupation till 11th March 1917, and 
on the day that the British entered Baghdad 
the Russians entered Kermanshah, hot (but not 
so hot) on the heels of the flying enemy. 

Throughout these two years the local repre- 
sentatives of the American Presbyterian Mission 



208 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

(Mr. and Mrs. Stead) remained at their post, act- 
ing the difficult but appropriate part of benevolent 
neutrals. They were barely quit of the Turk for 
good and all when America entered the war, and 
our friends gave up their role of benevolent 
neutrality for that of active co-operation within 
the spirit of their calling. 

There is now a considerable force of Russian in- 
fantry and Cossacks holding Kermanshah. Many 
of them are camped outside, but the majority 
occupy houses from which the Persian owners 
or tenants have been ejected. These troops are 
less feared than they were, and much less re- 
spected, their daily and nightly relations with the 
townspeople being the occasion of much friction 
and some disorder. Soldiers' and Workmen's 
delegates have sown their seeds of anarchy 
amongst the men, and committees are busy with 
revolutionary and subversive propaganda. The 
heart of the army, here as elsewhere, is gone : it 
is merely a thing of legs and arms and hungry 
mouths, and can hardly be called a fighting force. 
The one bright spot in this dull disarray is the 
Partisans' Detachment — a small mixed legion of 
men who have volunteered to support the Alliance 
and to continue the fight by the side and with 
the aid of the British. Their leader. Colonel 
Bicherakof, is an attractive character to an 
Englishman — a fighting Cossack of magnetic 
personality. His band of desperadoes gave us 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 209 

recently a display of trick-riding, in which the Cos- 
sack, who is born and bred to the saddle, excels. 

Needless to say, the question of supplies is a 
difficult one with our Russian friends, whose army 
service corps has no great reputation for honesty. 
Drought and the war have raised the price of 
bread here to three times its normal value in local 
currency, fodder and other necessaries are equally 
costly and scarce, and the native is driven to 
outcry when he sees his available foodstuffs being 
eaten or bought up by alien soldiers with large 
appetites. In addition to this the Russian has 
hitherto persisted in financing his requirements 
in northern Persia by flooding the country with 
rouble notes which nobody wants and which have 
lost more and more of their exchange value. In 
future, however, the British bank will provide 
silver for these requirements and receive the 
equivalent in sterhng in London at a rate of 
exchange more favourable to Russia. Meanwhile, 
the Russians, with all their troops, have re- 
peatedly been compelled to purchase grain from 
the Persians with the assistance of the British, 
who have no troops here at all. 

We have no troops here, certainly, but the 
Persian likes us all the better for that ; and he 
knows, moreover, that we are round the corner 
at Baghdad, which knowledge is quite enough for 
him to go on with. We have, however, two 
Imperial units attached to the Russian head- 



210 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

quarters here — an Anzac wireless station and a 
British- Indian survey party. The former num- 
bers a score of men with two officers, and it is 
thanks to them that we get Renter's news daily 
hot from Basra. Both parties arrived from 
Mesopotamia in June 1917. The surveyors are 
busy map-making, and their work appears to be a 
great improvement on any maps possessed by the 
Russians. Our noble Allies, however, with minds 
made morbid by failure, privately suspect the 
survey party of representing not the con- 
siderate generosity, but the ulterior designs, of 
the British. 

The Russian Red Cross has now closed its local 
hospital, but the Russian Land Association has two 
hospitals manned by women doctors and nurses, 
male orderlies, and one or two surgeons. They 
have no wounded, but the numbers of sick are 
astonishing, and there is a large proportion of 
malaria and typhus cases side by side in the same 
congested wards. The hospitals are not over- well 
run, and the beds contain a few malingerers ; but 
the ladies in charge deserve great praise for their 
consistent pluck and energy and cheerfulness. 
Two or three of them have sacrificed much social 
position and welfare to their enterprise, and all 
of them are in distressing doubt as to the fate of 
their families and their possessions ; yet they 
maintain, under these depressing conditions, a 
practical and robust outlook which is in strange 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 211 

contrast to the mental attitude of officers and 
men of the army. The hospitals have organised 
occasional theatrical performances as an enter- 
tainment for the soldiers, and to one of these we 
went the other evening. I came away from the 
crowded garden with my senses echoing much 
stage singing and dancing and drunkenness and 
murder, and with a general impression of good 
and spirited acting. 

Also I have been to a Persian play — a product 
of modernity brought out by the democrats in 
aid of some educational scheme. One or two of 
the actors had come from Teheran, but the rest 
were locally-produced amateurs, including a couple 
of Chaldeans. The play commenced about nine 
o'clock and went on till after midnight. It was 
a representation of life in a provincial town some 
years back, centring round a pleasure-loving, 
stupid, ignorant, idle and thoughtlessly tyrannical 
governor and his rapacious and hypocritical 
satellites, with a sidelight on the superstitious 
credulity of a family of oppressed villagers, the 
greed of the tax-collector, and the ruthlessness 
of an unfeeling village headman. The whole 
thing was a satire on the old types and manners 
and the old system, which persist largely in the 
present day : it was exaggerated and overdone, 
perhaps, but it contained many telling points, and 
was remarkably well acted. 



212 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Kermanshah, 20th December 1917. 

Dear M., — I have had another interesting jaunt 
since I wrote you last, and have seen some more 
new country. On the 2nd of November I had an 
urgent call to Sultanabad, which is a small town 
of recent growth in the centre of Persia between 
Hamadan and Isfahan. I had been warned of 
such a contingency and had just arranged with 
the lady doctor in charge of one of the Russian 
hospitals for a passage by car to Hamadan, so on 
the following afternoon I left with a suit-case in a 
touring Ford with two other passengers. The 
good lady, blinking benediction through her 
glasses, whispered to me as she saw me off to 
make friends with the officer in charge of the car, 
who might send it on with me from Hamadan 
to my journey's end — another eighty miles 
or so. 

We spent the night at Sahneh sleeping four in a 
small room, and reached Hamadan the following 
afternoon. I left again next morning at eleven 
with the same car, and found myself at six o'clock, 
after three punctures, belated with differential 
trouble at a village within an hour and a half's run 
of my destination. The headlights were working 
badly and the road was unknown to us, so I 
passed the night in a room at the house of the 
village headman, where we thawed our frozen 
limbs at a big wood fire and in due course thawed 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 213 

and comforted our interiors with an excellent and 
varied meal. 

Next morning the frozen car needed a couple of 
hours' coaxing before it would start, but event- 
ually we arrived before midday at Sultanabad, 
where I was welcomed by an old friend who made 
me his guest during the five weeks of my stay. 
The town lies at the mouth of a valley, on the flat 
edge of a huge level plain which stands 6000 feet 
above sea-level. The climate is cool and pleasant, 
though the natives give it a doubtful reputation 
on account of a marsh some miles away. The 
houses are new, and the streets are straight and 
comparatively broad. The familiar poplar is 
well in evidence, and the outskirts are laid out with 
flourishing vineyards, Sultanabad grapes and 
raisins being of particularly good quality. The 
district is an agricultural one, and supplies wheat 
and barley to the capital. It is also an important 
centre for the weaving of carpets, most of which 
are exported to Europe and America. The 
natives are of the central Persian type, and most 
resemble those of Isfahan. The governorship is 
held by a Bakhtiari chief, who keeps some two 
hundred mounted men of his tribe battening on 
the townsfolk. There are a hundred Russian 
Cossacks representing (or formerly representing) 
Allied interests. These men were recently ordered 
to centralise at Isfahan, but they are said to have 
replied that they had taken wives in Sultanabad, 



214 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

and were very comfortable where they were ! I 
found attempts were being made by the author- 
ities at the capital to establish a fixed price for 
wheat and barley in Sultanabad in view of the 
general crop failure, and much chicanery was 
going on in consequence. The familiar game of 
private money-making was likewise being played 
with great zest at the revenue office. 

The Sultanabad colony boasts a nine-hole golf 
course which provides better sport than any we 
ever played on at home. It is laid over a gravelly 
slope with a few artificial bunkers and two or 
three nasty dry and deep rivulet beds. The fair- 
way of the course is swept free of stones and scrub. 
Turf being impossible, the greens are ' browns ' 
made of a plaster of mud and straw as our tennis 
courts are made. Several of them are tilted 
with a considerable gradient, which, on the smooth 
surface, gives limitless putting possibilities. A 
gentle tap at the upper edge of the green, for 
instance, may send the ball rolling past the hole 
with gathering impetus as far as the opposite edge, 
while a ball putted from the lower end may miss 
the hole and roll back to the striker half a dozen 
times in succession : or you may be preparing a 
cautious hole- out at three or four feet when a 
great gust of wind comes and rolls your ball away 
to the rough. My biggest number of putts, I 
remember, was thirteen for one green. That was 
a bad day, however. The record for the course 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 215 

(held, needless to say, by a Scotsman) is somewhere 
about forty-five. 

My host's garden is unique in its way, as it 
produces what I believe are the best-grown apples 
and pears in Persia. His predecessor was a 
student of botany, and he gave his particular care 
to matters like grafting and pruning and liberal 
spacing, which are neglected by most Persian 
gardeners. I found that the members of the little 
European colony were making their own red and 
white wines, and that they could produce by very 
simple methods a good clear wine at a trifling cost. 

I left Sultanabad on my return journey a week 
ago, travelling as far as Hamadan in a light three- 
horse Victoria which I had hired to take me there 
for twenty pounds. The horses were a scratch 
lot that the driver had bought two days before 
for eleven pounds. They had been straw-fed for 
months, and as a consequence the journey took 
us three full days in a biting wind. I spent the 
third night in Hamadan and came on the follow- 
ing morning in another conveyance of exactly the 
same quality, which landed me here yesterday. 
The roads were almost bare of merchandise, but 
I passed a number of military convoys — or rather 
a straggling stream of odds and ends — ammuni- 
tion, stores, ambulance wagons, and men on 
horseback, on mules, or on foot, all anyhow — ^the 
Russians leaving Kermanshah and on their 
melancholy way home to taste the fruits of a 



216 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

disastrous peace in a topsy-turvy country. I 
was glad, for many reasons, to see them go — as 
one is glad to see a sick man give up the in- 
effectual struggle and take his trembling limbs 
to bed for a while. Not that their bed is anything 
but a bed of thorns. . . . God bless them, and 
give them peace ! 

Kermanshah, 6th January 1918. 

Dear M., — Since I wrote you last I have had a 
little run of festivities and farewells, ending in 
solitude. The Russians have continued their 
withdrawal till only the nucleus of their garrison 
is left. Among the last to go were the sisters at 
the one remaining hospital, who have played the 
game splendidly to the end : they had no tears 
for us — only sparkling eyes and laughing lips as 
they said good-bye, and waving hands as they 
sped off through a light fall of snow. Later, on 
New Year's Day, the Anzac wireless and the 
British- Indian survey party went away in the 
opposite direction, bound for Baghdad. The con- 
sul and his wife left on the same day for a short 
absence. The American missionary is away on 
duty, leaving his wife alone. The Russian consul 
remains with his wife, and there is also the Belgian 
director of customs, whom one seldom sees. 

The town is much disturbed by lawlessness — 
the work of ne'er-do-wells and political agitators. 
The Persian agent for foreign affairs was shot in 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 217 

the street on the 2nd. The new governor, who 
arrived here on 4th November, is a man of straw. 
The Russian general and his die-hards are ap- 
prehensive without reason, uneasy in their minds, 
anxious for the return of the Partisans who went 
to Mesopotamia in the autumn to fight on the 
British right flank and are now on their way back. 
The newspapers, having seen most of the Turks 
and the Russians depart from Persia, are agitating 
for the withdrawal of the British troops likewise, 
from the south and elsewhere. ' Away with the 
South Persia Rifles,' they say, 'and let this 
harassed neutral country settle its internal affairs 
in peace ! ' They have been saying the same 
thing ever since Sir Percy Sykes began his levy- 
raising in 1916, but the campaign for ousting the 
British has become more vigorous of late. The 
Persians incline to think that England is on the 
downgrade and will soon share the fate of Russia, 
so in the meantime their minor publicists are the 
less averse to a little well-paid propagandism on 
behalf of Germany. 

In spite of the departure of the Russian troops 
the price of bread stands at seven times its nornVd 
figure. Famine relief has been started in all the 
large towns, where deaths from starvation are 
increasing in number. The trade of this town 
has sunk to a low level as the Baghdad route has 
been closed since November 1914, and the Shiraz 
road is closed also, and some of the other routes 



218 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

are infested with robbers. A way, however, has 
been open for some months from Basra through 
the hitherto close territory of the Vah of Pusht- 
ikuh, and caravans of tea and sugar are coming 
up by slow degrees. These commodities fetch a 
hundred per cent, profit, and are sold at prices 
far beyond the reach of the poor. The enter- 
prising Jew, risking his capital handsomely, 
makes the bulk of the profit, but doesn't brag 
about it. 

Kermanshah, 29th January 1918. 
Dear M.,— Great doings these last three weeks, 
and more to follow. Great, that is, for a little 
place like this. If you had told me a couple 
of months ago that we should have British 
aeroplanes landing at Kermanshah and British 
armoured cars passing through the town, I should 
have laughed regretfully and suggested in addi- 
tion a review of the Guards by the King, or 
something equally impossible and incongruous. 
But the aeroplanes come and go, and already I 
have had a joy-ride in a Lamb car, and our poor 
little tables are graced, at last, with a variety 
of good company, and life has taken on a new 
colour. 

The main party of Russian Partisans arrived 
from Mesopotamia five hundred strong on the 
11th, bringing with them many cases of Japanese 
beer and English cigarettes and Indian rupee 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 219 

notes, and much honour for their effective httle 
fight on the Diala River. With them came an 
EngUsh haison officer and an Australian wireless 
party — the latter to replace the Russian wireless 
who dismantled their installation and went off 
home three days before. The Partisans were 
welcomed at lunch by General Mistulof and his 
few remaining officers, and we had two and a half 
hours of solid food and strong drink, and fiery 
speeches shouted out in quick and long succession. 
Through it all the Partisans' leader, Colonel 
Bicherakof, sat like a rock in the surge. His face 
was lit with happiness, and he beamed good- 
naturedly on the noisy conviviality of his tur- 
bulent countrymen : he spoke little, but his eye 
sparkled as he referred to the generous hospitality 
and the wonderful organisation of the British, 
who had fed his men like fighting-cocks. 

At five o'clock we all went home, and the 
English officer buried himself in despatch- writing. 
The wireless operators got busy under difficulties, 
and Baghdad, growing impatient, ordered the 
preparation of a rough landing-ground for aero- 
planes to bring up and take back despatches. 
On the 16th a couple of R.E. 8's arrived. The 
pilots were a delightful pair of ' bootiful young 
men,' and I spent a very happy evening in their 
company. They flew back to Bakuba next 
morning, taking with them a supply of potatoes 
for their mess. These pioneer aeroplanes created 



220 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

a great sensation in the town, and there was much 
speculation among the Persians as to what their 
coming foretold. 

On the 26th one of the aeroplanes returned 
accompanied by a third and bearing as a passenger 

Colonel S , whose name you will have seen 

in Morgan Shuster's book. S is a man of 

convictions, and as keen as ever on Persian 
questions. He stayed two nights and flew on 
yesterday to Teheran. The first armoured car 
arrived with its satellite Fords on the 27th, and 
passed on to Hamadan on the 28th. On the 
same day Colonel Bicherakof and the English 
officer with him went off to Hamadan to feel the 
pulse of the Russians there. 

' What are we out for ? ' you ask. Well, 
we 're out to help the Armenians if possible, but 
in any case to support the Caucasus in holding 
out against a Bolshevik peace, which means that 
we must get to Baku and strengthen the hands 
of the people there. It seems that I am to have 
the privilege of watching a real British military 
side-show of the traditional sort, and it 's going 
to be great fun. 

Kermanshah is an attractive station, and might 
be made a place for the gods. The town is built 
on and around a hill, at the mouth of a valley 
which debouches on to a broad fertile plain where 
the winter wheat is already showing. Through 
the plain, from north-west to south-east, runs a 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 221 

goodly river with willow groves at intervals on 
its banks. On the other side, six miles away, the 
northern mountains rise abruptly to a height of 
11,000 feet above sea-level, the town itself being 
already at an altitude of 5000 feet. The flat 
plain is almost bare of trees, and is given up to 
agriculture, with a few little villages dotted here 
and there. The view from the south above and 
across the town is a magnificent one, and the eye 
roves from west to east and from east to west 
about an uninterrupted panorama, dwelling ever 
and again on the countless contours of these 
fascinating mountains, which stand out at every 
hour in some new aspect of light and shade. The 
peaks and the upper slopes are covered with snow, 
and the setting sun, couching in the uplands to 
westward, spreads for us daily an evening ban- 
quet of colour— soft, varied, and indescribably 
delicate in the ethereal expanse of this pure 
atmosphere. 

Kermanshah, 2,Uh February 1918. 

Dear M., — The show is getting well under way, 

and we have had a month of expanding activities, 

in which there is now a momentary lull so far 

as Kermanshah is concerned. On the 30th came 

Captain G , an energetic young political officer 

of brilliant quality, who has been doing admir- 
able work since his arrival. His office is usually 
haunted by (in addition to more worthy people) 



222 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

native toadies, intriguers, agitators, blackmailers, 
cadgers, would-be contractors, and other gentle- 
men of the jackal variety, relations with whom do 
not encourage roseate ideas of the Persian char- 
acter. On the 31st another airman arrived, and 
he and his brother pilot, who had been stranded 
here for several days owing to snow and bad 
weather, returned to Bakuba on the first of this 

month. On the 2nd, Bicherakof and Colonel C 

returned from Hamadan with depressing views 
of the Russian situation there. On the 3rd came 

General D with a party of officers in about 

thirty Ford cars on their way to Hamadan. 

General D is it, straight from the War Office 

and bound for the Caucasus. The curtain is 
rung up on the first act, and the star actor- 
manager has appeared — sl fine big Englishman 
who ' takes the stage ' well. The officers are his 
staff and a first consignment of his Force. 

On the 4th, Major P arrived with another 

Lamb car, and was hung up by bad weather. 
On the 5th an inch of snow fell, and on the 8th 
four inches — unfortunately for the armoured car. 
On the 10th the airman who had taken Colonel 

S to Teheran returned, looking somewhat 

the worse for wear after a week's lionising at the 
capital. He showed me some Persian newspapers 
with descriptions of his landing, and with many 
indignant comments on this violation of the 
neutral air of Persia. The natives were markedly 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 223 

unfriendly, he said, and German and Austrian 
officers were much in evidence in the streets — 
these officers being prisoners of war who had been 
sent east by the Russians and who had escaped or 
been released and come south into Persia to 
further German aims. Next morning he flew 
on to Mesopotamia, taking with him Colonel 
Bicherakof, who was in one of his sulky and im- 
patient moods and wanted to visit our General 
Headquarters. 

On the 17th, General Shore arrived from Ram- 
adan on his way home from Tiflis via Baku and 
Baghdad. He was breathing fire and brimstone 
on the Bolshevik, and had many convincing tales 
to tell of anarchy and blood and murder in the 
Caucasus. On the 20th, Colonel Bicherakof re- 
turned from Baghdad on horseback, and on the 
23rd, Colonel C went off to Hamadan again. 

The road to Baghdad is definitely open at last, 
and the traders are asking when they will be 
allowed to import goods that way, as the Pusht- 
ikuh route is not at all satisfactory. But the 
time is not yet. Meanwhile, the Jews pray for 
the coming of the British, of which the native 
hears rumours, and of which he thinks he sees 
signs. The price of bread, which had dropped 
somewhat, is going up again, and the famine 
continues to develop. The political agitation 
against the presence of British troops in Persia 
grows. It has found a leader in the person of 



224 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Mirza Kuchik Khan, a middle-class gentleman 
who controls some hundreds of warlike followers 
on the Caspian coast, near Resht. The name of 
the Jangali (the forest-dweller) tribe has become 
notorious, and their leader has addressed appeals 
to the muUas and the tribes of these parts to help 
in the cause of Persian independence, for which, 
he declares, the Court party in Teheran care not a 
scrap. He is a sincere Nationalist, by all accounts, 
and to some extent disinterested, though how far 
so is not known. He and the Bolsheviks between 
them may be responsible for the fact that General 

D , finding the state of affairs unfavourable 

for the present, has returned to Hamadan, where 
some of his officers are now engaged on famine 
relief work. 

Kermanshah, 20th March 1918. 

Dear M., — To-day is the Persian New Year's 
Eve, and to-morrow the native will commence his 
annual holiday, which lasts from two days to a 
fortnight. My thoughts are busy with spring, 
and my gardener has been working hard for the 
last ten days, with the aid of half a dozen casual 
labourers, digging and dressing the soil and sowing 
seed. The sowing smacks of war-time economy, 
as the seeds I ordered from India last autumn 
haven't arrived, and he must perforce carry on 
with the few flower-seeds he has — ^asters, chrysan- 
themums, petunias, iris, snapdragons, cosmos, and 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 225 

marigolds — and give up most of the plentiful open 
spaces to vegetables. He put in some peach and 
apple saplings recently in place of the big walnut 
trees cut down by the Turks for firewood when 
they used this house as a convalescent hospital. 
He is now planting potatoes, carrots, turnips, 
onions, tomatoes, peas, beetroot, lettuce, parsley, 
spinach, cabbages, and cauliflower. Also he is 
cleaning the strawberry bed and trimming the 
vines, which, like the fruit trees, I cannot induce 
him to prune suJSiciently. The lucerne field is 
showing a fresh green, and the beans at one end 
of it are well above ground. My gardener likes 
to spend an idle winter and do all the knife and 
saw and spade work with a rush at this time of 
the year. He says it is madness to prune trees 
before the new sap rises. 

Apart from the vegetable patches, the garden 
is a dear, delightful jungle of things. At the foot 
of it, by the gateway, are the stables, and behind 
them, along a part of one wall, is the tennis-court 
— useless till the rains are over in May, because 
the rains would ruin its top-dressing of mud-and- 
straw plaster. Between the gateway and the 
house the way is bordered on both sides with 
poplars. On the one hand is a medley of walnut, 
pear, apple, and almond trees ; on the other a 
swimming-tank, thirty feet by twelve, lies in the 
middle of the garden surrounded by a guard of 
stout willows. Below it is a screen of jungle : 

p 



226 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

above it is a thick tangle of morelloes and sour 
plums half-strangled with vines. On either side 
of the house, and climbing the slope behind it, is 
more promiscuous orchard — apples and pears and 
figs and almonds and apricots and quinces and 
mulberries and pomegranates, with long grass and 
weeds growing underfoot, and hollyhocks and 
chicory and larkspur rising haphazard out of the 
grass, and roses and blackberries bordering the 
ample watercourse. And when you would prowl 
there in the fruit-time, or take tea beneath the 
spreading branches in the leafy summer, you pick 
your way at large in a maze of wildflowers and 
woodland, for here are no walks to discipline 
your feet, nor any rows or angles to arrest your 
eye and cry halt to your fancy. This is the part 
of my garden that I like best. The gardener is 
paid to let it alone, and being but a philosophic 
hireling he is well content to do so. 

General Baratof, the divisional commander who 
held this front against the Turk, has been here 
making long speeches at late dinners. He and 
Colonel Bicherakof and Colonel Leslie (a Russian 
of remote Scottish origin) have all gone off in 
the last week for good and all, and the whole of 
the Partisans' Detachment with them, so that the 
only Russians now here are the consul and his 
wife and his assistant and the assistant's wife — 
the latter lady being, incidentally, a dentist with 
a flourishing practice. The future of the Russians 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 227 

who have just gone is uncertain, as the Bolsheviks 
are said to be out for their blood for having kept 
faith with Russia's late allies and ignored the 
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. 

The British have at last committed themselves 
openly to sending troops into north-west Persia. 
The whole major question of our presence any- 
where in the country has apparently been opened 
up, and the alternatives of reinforcement or 
absolute withdrawal seem to have hung in the 
balance while the matter was honestly faced and 
debated. The decision was made about twelve 
days ago, and on the 12th of March the British 
minister in Teheran presented a note to the 
Persian government accordingly, in which it was 
intimated that British troops would be introduced 
into north-west Persia, and advanced farther if 
need be for the protection, during the war only, 
of our military interests against enemy action, 
political or military. 

So that 's that. But now that the responsible 
people have made up their minds, let them act 
quickly for the sake of our dignity. The town, 
by the way, is none too peaceful, and lawlessness 
is still prevalent. Only two days ago an employee 
of the bank was accidentally wounded in three 
places in a sort of Texas encounter with pistols 
between two swashbuckling blackguards, not 
twenty yards from the bank door. 



228 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Kermanshah, 15th April 1918. 
Dear M., — The show goes on merrily, and our 
activities continue to expand. Several more 
parties of oJBficers and N.C.O.'s have passed 
through for General Dunsterville's Force, which is 
asking for all sorts of things and getting a few of 
them. More L.A.M. cars have arrived, also an 
administrative commandant and a local purchase 
officer, likewise a company of l/4th Hants and 
a detachment of 14th Hussars— the latter hard- 
bitten men of the old school, with a masterpiece 
of a sergeant straight from the pages of Punch. 
The roads are hopelessly soft and muddy, and 
cause much heartbreaking, making the armoured 
cars useless. To-day it is raining heavily — the 
fifth fall since the 20th of March. The weather 
is ideal for the crops, and a good wheat harvest 
is expected in June and July, but unfortunately 
only a third of the possible area has been sown, 
as a result mainly of the devastation wrought by 
the Turkish and Russian armies and the general 
insecurity hitherto prevailing. The peasants are 
largely destitute, and the villages on the line of 
march from the Turkish frontier are mostly in a 
state of utter ruin and desertion. Wheat has 
risen to eight times its normal price, and the 
British have been carrying out extensive road 
construction here and down the line and in , 
Hamadan to relieve the very poor, who are dying 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 229 

by scores daily. Thousands of them, mostly 
women and children, are mere half-demented 
skeletons, incapable of labour till they have been 
fed for some time. The American missionaries 
are taking a most active part in the work of relief 
and maintenance. The situation is worse in 
Hamadan, where cannibalism has occurred. . . . 

We ourselves suffer no shortage, though we 
have to pay ten shillings a pound for tea, and four 
shillings and sixpence a pound for sugar. We get 
beef occasionally, and good mutton always. The 
river produces very fair fish of several kinds, 
including carp and one like the Indian mahseer. 
Eggs are always to be had, and in any case my 
cook keeps his own fowls. My cow provides me 
with four quarts of milk daily, which is the 
maximum hereabouts, and out of this I get a 
sufficient supply of table butter. Crushed wheat, 
soaked overnight, makes an excellent porridge. 
The Persian won't keep pigs, so we get no break- 
fast bacon unless we import it in tins, which it 
is almost impossible to do at present. Jam is 
another difficulty : honey is to be had in season, 
and there is a sticky sweet-stuff made out of grape 
juice which comes from the interior and which 
makes a very good substitute. The bill for food 
alone for an ordinary household is about a 
sovereign a day, and in most parts of the country 
it is more. 

My cook is a local product, an open-mouthed 



230 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

young man who can bake a cake or cover a pie or 
prepare a vol-au-vent or a chicken in aspic with 
the best. His pecuUarities are a partiahty for 
minced meat and a horror of onions. My head- 
servant is a prize specimen — a young Afghan 
brought up in Kermanshah and married to a 
Persian, with two pretty Httle dark-eyed daugh- 
ters. He runs the house to perfection and allows 
me to mind my own business while he minds his — 
never needing to be told that a room should be 
cleaned or a door mended or the linen changed or 
a button sewn on or a visitor regaled. He knows 
all about our army rank and never consults me 
about precedence, and his quick eye is amusingly 
accurate on that point. Moreover, he is deft, 
active, and noiseless, and his respectful, solicitous 
smile is alone worth half his wages to a tired 
bachelor. His ' mate ' is a round-faced, smooth- 
cheeked, dapper, and deliberate little man who 
cleans the lamps and dusts the furniture and 
washes the dishes, and keeps his clothes spotless 
through it all. He is a local Persian and supports 
a wife and family. The ' sweeper ' is a wide-eyed, 
heavy-handed fellow, who fetches the water and 
prepares the baths and cleans the carpets and 
makes the fires. He is addicted to opium, but 
is trustworthy and fairly industrious. His wages 
are largely spent in propitiating the drug fiend. 
The gardener is also a local man — a placid, steady- 
going, simple-minded worker, who appropriates 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 281 

the produce of the garden over and above his 
perquisites when he gets the chance. He sends 
his little son to school, but has no ambitions for 
the son's emancipation from manual labour. The 
gardener's apprentice looks after the cow and her 
calf, helps his master on the irrigation days, and 
sings, on sunny afternoons, little snatches of song. 
Fortunately most afternoons are sunny. 

Kermanshah, 28tk June 1918. 
Dear M., — I have had a very busy two months, 
and now, behold ! we are in midsummer, and life is 
a pleasant and goodly thing — at night, when the 
tiny black dog stops barking, and the water 
gurgles under the trees and the nightingale drops 
little showers of pearls into the moonlight — or at 
dawn, when I sip my tea and get out of bed 
and take a look at the mountains, and go down 
to the middle of the garden and stand barefooted 
on the grass by the deep tank and look out across 
the sleeping town through the delicate mists of 
morning to the wonderful vista away to the north- 
west, and then plunge into the fresh cool water 
and startle the fat old frogs and the goldfish, and 
come out again with the cobwebs of sleep and the 
sting of the sandfly all gone — or in the afternoon, 
when the heat of the day is passing and I slough 
my w^ork- weariness and summer slackness in the 
magic waters by the willows, and come back to 
subside into a big easy-chair — or in the evenings. 



232 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

when the lamps are Ht among a kindly company, 
and the pieces are pushed about the board of war 
and its local aspects and problems in the criss- 
cross of easy conversation. 

Do you frown as you read this, and turn again 
to your meatless days and your nursing of shat- 
tered bodies and your newspapers' tales of coming 
German offensives ? 

The war drags on as unfruitfully here as at 
home, but with a confidence as big-hearted. We 
are still developing — not for fighting at Kerman- 
shah, but for passing on fighters and material 
over the long highway from railhead at Ruz to 
the Caspian Sea and beyond. There are so few 
fighters, and they need so much material over 
this terribly long line ! In the beginning of May 
we had typhus in camp — over a score of men of 
the l/4th Hants down at one time, with only 
one M.O. and no orderlies to look after them. 
The 14th Hussars provided volunteer orderlies, 
and the M.O. provided skill and care and untiring 
attention, and the typhus cases were all saved. 
During the epidemic some Turkish deserters were 
released, for the reason that there was no accom- 
modation for them and there were not enough 
troops to guard them. They were told to come 
back on a certain date, and they went away crest- 
fallen. On the day indicated they returned, and 
it was found that their numbers had grown from 
twenty- five to thirty- six. More deserters pre- 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 233 

sented themselves later, and for some weelis they 
kept trickling into the town with their pockets 
empty and their clothes desperately in rags, 
accosting officers in the streets and begging to 
be arrested and sent to Baghdad. 

Troops dribble up, and the town hums with 
motor transport. The last rains fell in May, and 
the cars and lorries no longer stick in the mud, but 
cover themselves with dust instead. Mesopotamia 
has fixed its tired eyes, somewhat wonderingly, 
on the Persian Line of Communications and the 
doings of the Dunster Force at the other end of it. 
Baghdad, baulked by our needs of its advance on 
Mosul in the spring, turns in the hot summer of 
the plains to thoughts of the cooler altitude of 
Kermanshah, where the maximum temperature 
never exceeds 106°. The Higher Commands, tak- 
ing advantage of the lull in their own operations, 
have come up to get a better idea of w^hat is 
happening on their right flank, and to scrutinise 
the longest L. of C. in history, or to inspect and 
advise the forces under their control. They have 
stayed a couple of days, cursed our sandflies, and 
dashed back to the land of electric fans, iced 
drinks, and 118° in the shade. 

The Baghdad road is open to trade, and caravans 
of merchandise are streaming along it. The Jew 
has scuttled in to make his fortune, the Persian 
merchant following more sedately in his wake. 



234 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Kermanshah, 31st July 1918. 

Dear M.,— The grain has been harvested, and 
the famine is over at last, though very Httle of the 
wheat has been brought in owing to lack of trans- 
port, all the available donkeys being engaged by 
the troops on road-making. Prices are high and 
likely to remain so, as the British requirements 
are heavy. The force has thrown an arm north- 
wards into Kurdistan in support of the Christian 
tribes south of Urmia who were stoutly opposing 
the Turk with the very small means at their dis- 
posal. A detachment of 14th Hussars and Hamp- 
shires left here for Senneh some weeks ago. The 
Gurkhas have been using their kukris most effect- 
ively in Resht, and have cleared the atmosphere 
of that town itself, while the Jangalls outside the 
town have been brought to terms by a little 
bombing from aeroplanes — a form of warfare 
against which they are powerless. The bigwigs 
from Mesopotamia continue to keep us up to the 
scratch with hurried visits, and Kermanshah, 
despite the sandflies, looks like becoming a minor 

hill-station for Baghdad. General D has been 

down to G.H.Q., and passed through again on the 
20th on his way back to Kazvin. The British 
Navy is about to hoist its flag on the Caspian Sea 
for the first time in history. My servant, Rasul, 
telephoned to my offlce yesterday to announce 
the arrival of a strange sahibmansab at the house. 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 235 

' He is not an ordinary major or colonel or 
captain or general, sahib. I don't know what 
he is ! ' The mysterious officer proved to be the 
expected commodore — a sight for the gods in 
these parts. When I got home in the afternoon 
I found him rolling like a giddy porpoise in the 
tank. I took to the water after him, and we 
finished off the operation with a dish of black 
mulberries and cream, followed by tea and a cheery 
pipe at the end of it. 

So you are off to Madrid in the autumn. Well, 
I hope you won't marry a Spaniard. Perhaps 
the place may give you some light on my remarks 
about Persia, as by all accounts the two countries 
have some points of resemblance — in geography 
and climate, and to some extent in character and 
national conditions and outlook. There must 
be a good deal of Arab blood in the south, too. 
I notice, however, that while Spain is only a third 
of the size of Persia, its population is double that 
of this country. 

Kermanshah, 29th September 1918. 
Dear M., — Much has happened since I wrote 
you two months ago. Our half-heartedly heroic 
efforts north of Persian Kurdistan miscarried 
somewhat, and the Christian tribes of the Urmia 
Lake district decided in consequence to make a 
bolt for it, save what was left of their souls, and 
throw themselves on the hospitality of the British. 



236 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

So, while our department of local resources was 
straining its utmost to procure sufficient grain, 
meat, and so forth to feed the sappers and hospitals 
and posts and travelling troops in its area, their 
distracting reflections on things in general were 
enlivened by the receipt of a wire from Hamadan 
announcing the imminent arrival of 60,000 hungry 
refugees. Sixty thousand — a, number equal to 
the whole population of Kermanshah ! In due 
course they began to arrive — Syrians in little 
Robinson Crusoe hats, sturdy Jhelus, scowling 
Armenians with their wives and families and 
their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and 
grandmothers, and their ponies and buffaloes and 
big lumbering oxen — some of the men riding, 
some of the women walking, lots of them in 
British motor-lorries, all of them hungry and 
dirty, most of them penniless (though the Armen- 
ians have rich uncles who are waiters in New 
York and Chicago), and many of them steeped in 
malaria or worse disease. They were pushed on 
to Mesopotamia by all means possible, and they 
have been arriving and being pushed on ever 
since. It is a wonderful migration — a second 
Exodus, with the Turk for Pharaoh and the British 
for Moses. But what a splendidly tactful, sym- 
pathetic, and tireless leader Moses must have 
been ! 

The bid for Baku was too much for us, as the 
newspapers will have told you. The Turks bid 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 237 

much higher, and got it in the end. They had an 
army for the capture of the town, whereas General 
D had a mere nine hundred men for its reten- 
tion. The Baku Armenians were expected to 
help, but they broke and ran from the attack, and 
were massacred for their pains after our troops 
had sailed back to Persian soil. Echoes of the 
fight still reach us in the form of occasional 
wounded men going down to the base. The 
whole of this little campaign has been one big 
bluff — a stouthearted, madcap adventure, with 
Bicherakof in the van, and behind him our big 
Elizabethan Englishman, riding magnificently for 
a fall. It might have been a glorious success, 
but as the luck went, it has been a very gallant 
failure. Meanwhile, we have wondered much 
why the Turk has not attempted to come round 
south and cut us off somewhere between Kerman- 
shah and Resht — a long line and an absurdly 
thin one. Probably the Turk is played out, 
and in any case he would find the question of 
supply even more difficult than it has been for 
our men. 

We are in the thick of Spanish influenza, and 
the troops have suffered heavily. Pneumonia and 
malaria on top of it have caused many deaths, 
particularly amongst the Indians, and the hos- 
pitals here and in Hamadan are full of sick. The 
epidemic has spread through the towns, and half 
the population seems to have suffered more or 



238 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

less. My own turn came on the 21st, and all 
my servants went down with it at the same 
time. 

The British minister in Teheran has gone home, 
and his place has been taken by Sir Percy Cox, who 
was civil commissioner in Baghdad and has now 
gone to the Persian capital in the capacity of 
special commissioner and charge d'affaires. The 
move is an interesting one, and suggests that the 
Foreign Office is now taking affairs in this country 
seriously. 

Kermanshah, 25th October 1918. 

Dear M., — The news of the surrender of Bul- 
garia was the best we had had for a long time, and 
in a continuous stream of good news, too. It 
indicated the cutting-off of Turkey from her allies, 
and, in combination with the shattering of Turkey's 
forces in Palestine in the first week of October, it 
suggests the early elimination of another enemy, 
which would leave us at peace on this front. 
Meanwhile, Mesopotamia is putting in an oppor- 
tune blow, and our troops are active on the road 
to Mosul. 

Since I wrote you last month I have paid a 
short visit to Baghdad, where I spent a few very 
pleasant days. The journey by car takes two 
days or more. The road on this side of the 
frontier has been metalled to a great extent, and 
sappers and steam rollers are still busy on it, and 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 239 

will be so for some time to come. The villages 
that formed the old caravan stages are still in 
utter ruin. 

I got back here on the 19th and spent the follow- 
ing day snipe-shooting at a spot eighteen miles 
away. We motored out at eight-thirty and 
arrived at the Lake of Lilies before ten o'clock. 
From there the snipe marshes run north, more or 
less in line, to another small sheet of water with 
reed banks. We shot till one, and then settled 
down on a convenient knoll to explore the con- 
tents of the tiffin-basket. After lunch we thought 
it over comfortably for a while, and then decided 
unanimously not to spoil a perfect day, but rather 
to leave the rest of the birds for a future occasion. 
So we drove back in cheery mood and arrived 
home at four o'clock, in good time for a change 
and tea and a few rubbers of bridge to complete 
the programme. The bag for the four guns was 
21 snipe, 4 mallard, 3 teal, and 5 plover — a good 
average day. 

In Baghdad I heard two of the four biggest men 
there asked when they thought the war would be 
over. One of them said we might expect it to 
last till 1921. The other said he thought it 
might end by Christmas, but he didn't anticipate 
a separate armistice with Turkey in the meantime, 
as our terms would be too heavy to tempt the 
Turks. So now you know. 



240 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

Kermanshah, 29th December 1918. 

Dear M., — I am sorry for you in Madrid. A 
neutral country must be the last place to be in 
these cheery days. I am in a neutral country 
myself, of course, but really I forget the fact often 
enough, as the life we lead is so unlike that of the 
old peace-time. The hours pass pleasantly in 
congenial work, and the invaluable boon of good 
company is never lacking. Kermanshah, by the 
way, has a finer set of fellows in its officers' 
messes than any other place on the line. Good 
relations never fail, and the leaven of humour 
lightens the telephone talk and semi-official 
correspondence and anteprandial assemblies all 
the time. 

The hospitals are no longer congested, and the 
work of the doctors (and padres) is less onerous 
than it was. We have a Red Cross depot, and 
plenty of small pianos — and gramophones that 
never seem to get played. The men have a 
Soldiers' Club where dances and lectures while 
away the long evenings, particularly for those 
who are kicking their heels in the well-filled rest- 
house waiting for transport. The Mechanical 
Transport (in whose ranks art always seems to 
flourish) have regaled the station with two or 
three first-rate variety performances. Arrange- 
ments were made for a varied programme of 
sports on Christmas and Boxing Day, but snow 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 241 

and rain prevented most of the meetings. Snipe- 
shooting is popular with Headquarters on 
off-days, and I have spent a few dehghtful 
afternoons in the gardens around, and in the 
very EngUsh ' bottoms ' up the valley, after 
woodcock — ^though I confess I haven't shot any 
woodcock. 

The belated canteen is at last well stocked, and 
Tommy gets an ample supply of cigarettes and 
tinned things. It has been forcibly impressed 
on us here from the first that our fighting man is 
a conservative creature. He wants his Woodbine, 
and turns up his nose at the Persian cigarette 
which the mere officer smokes : even when the 
troops at Resht were given fresh caviare as a 
ration they expressed strong disapproval of what 
they called ' fish- jam.' 

And what about demobilisation now that every- 
thing has been got going nicely at last ? All the 
men and most of the officers are impatient for it. 
The Turks have vanished, Germany is a burst 
balloon, and Russia has thrown herself out of the 
window. What remains but to go home ? Meso- 
potamia is going home — one division has already 
started on its way down to Basra. The troops up 
this line now move, when they move at all, towards 
Baghdad only, and from Kermanshah itself a few 
officers in the teachers' and students' category 
are going home. But the sappers and pioneers 
remain, and the road-making goes on. Will they 

Q 



242 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

complete the work, I wonder, or will they leave 
the road in parts a rough unfinished monument, 
to draw, for a decade, the smiles and imprecations 
of muleteers and camelmen and motorists, instead 
of their blessings for a generation ? 

On the 17th of November we entered Baku 
again, under different conditions and with differ- 
ent prospects. The Black Sea is open, and we 
are establishing a base at Batoum, the western 
port of the Caucasus. We have made our bow 
to the Georgians, walked into Tiflis, and settled 
down there. So, as the war ends, a new campaign 
develops east of Constantinople, and a more 
convenient occidentation is given to our opera- 
tions in distant Transcaspia. India is not yet 
safe. The Turco- German threat is past, and 
Imperial Russia is no more ; but a fresh source 
of apprehension has discovered itself to our 
watchful political representatives during the last 
twelve months : the ghost of Bolshevism troubles 
their sleep. And Persia ? Persia is the long 
dark passage down which the horrid ghost may 
come to our precious India. So we place an 
unimaginative sentry in the passage, and we talk 
of putting electric light there, and then we go to 
bed and draw the blankets round us. And India, 
all the time, becomes, by our decrees, less and 
less a Field for our Younger Sons — ^becomes less 
and less of a white man's country : so that our 
finer youth will shortly have none of it, and the 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 243 

process of enfranchisement will accordingly be 
hastened. 

All of which unfolds to my satisfaction (and I 
hope to yours) the perfect and ideal quality of 
our national Imperialism. For are we not at 
this moment engaged in jealously protecting 
with the one hand what we are giving up with 
the other ? 

Kermanshah, 6th February 1919. 

Dear M., — I am for home, and leave to-morrow 
via Baku and Constantinople. I shall be a sort 
of Rip Van Winkle, I suppose, after these six 
years. But I suspect that the great changes 
produced by the war may not have been so very 
radical as was foretold. We had strikes and the 
possibility of civil war in Ireland in 1914, and we 
seem to have both still. The general election 
campaign has apparently been like previous ones, 
with the same catchword frothiness, the same 
pandering to vulgar impulse and short-sighted 
selfishness, the same rash promises. The anti- 
climax to war, viewed from a distance, is dis- 
appointing. Yet the public mind seems inclined 
to a spiritual awakening, though the talk of the 
publicists is still class talk. Is not the world ripe 
for the coming of a new prophet ? 

There has been little movement here since I 
wrote you last. The Mechanical Transport is 
being largely withdrawn, as it has been found that 



244 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

it isn't worth its upkeep in petrol now that pack 
transport is less difficult to provide for our re- 
duced requirements. Trade with Baghdad and 
the interior continues to flourish on an unpre- 
cedented scale. The Jews are coining money, 
and being of Baghdad origin are putting forward 
claims for British protection on the ground of 
our occupancy of Mesopotamia. The governor, 
a Persian prince of famous parentage, who was 
educated at Harrow and Sandhurst and passed a 
term with the French Army, is mildly interested 
in industrial development. I have suggested to 
him the possibilities of sugar beet, and of a glass 
factory under European supervision to begin 
with, and also the favourable conditions for ex- 
tending the local manufacture of carpets, which 
could best be done by bringing a score of crafts- 
men from Kerman for a beginning. He has not 
enough security of tenure, however, to foster 
such enterprises. 

The future of Persia is still uncertain. Various 
ideas have been mooted for its military policing 
and governance ; but perhaps the Peace Confer- 
ence will eventually decide the fate of this country 
in the general settlement for which we are all wait- 
ing. Meanwhile, I alarmed a local leading official 
the other day by drawing a lurid picture of what 
might happen if and when the British withdrew. 
The Shah is none too popular, and his throne might 
conceivably topple. Monarchist and republican 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 245 

nationalists would disagree, and there would be 
fighting. Several of the bigger tribes would make 
a bid for supreme power, and there would be 
raids and slaughter and general disorder. The 
boiling pot of the Caucasus, with the controlling 
hand of Imperial Russia removed, would bubble 
over into north-west Persia, while on the eastern 
side the Turkoman and other tribes would overrun 
the fair province of Khorasan, laying it waste on 
historical lines. Local and foreign trade would 
cease, as the roads would be infested with bandits. 
The Persian government has had a chance to 
set its house in order while British troops were 
strengthening its hand, but nothing has been 
done to take advantage of a golden opportunity, 
and the average official, when he is not robbing 
the public, is still wrapt in plaintive apathy. 
My friend agreed with all this (the Persian is 
nothing if not polite) and added, with enthusiasm, 
that every member of the official and ruling 
classes was corrupt and dishonest, except himself. 

London, 15th March 1919. 
Dear M., — I left Kermanshah by car on the 7th 
of February, stayed over the 9th at Hamadan, 
and arrived at Kazvin on the 10th, Resht on the 
12th, and Baku on the 14th. At Kazvin and 
Resht I found our political and military repre- 
sentatives energetically negotiating between rival 
elements of local politics. At Baku I observe 



246 FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 

with admiration that our miHtary chiefs, who were 
more remarkable for quaHty than for strength of 
numbers, had settled down in some of the 
choicest premises available and were calmly, 
comfortably, and effectively fathering the affairs 
of four small, very excitable, and brand-new 
republics. I left Baku on the evening of the 15th 
by a troop-train carrying Austrian prisoners of 
war under an escort of Staffords — miners on their 
way home. We halted a few hours at Tiflis and 
at frequent intervals en route, and arrived at 
Batoum on the morning of the 19th. On the 
22nd I left Batoum on a big troopship, and 
arrived at Constantinople in a thick fog on the 
24th. The shores of the Bosphorus were delight- 
fully picturesque. Constantinople, seen through 
the fog, offered a strange contrast, with the slender 
minarets and ample domes of the great Stamboul 
mosques unfolding beauty and enchantment on 
the one side of the Golden Horn, and on the other 
the businesslike, many-storied modern buildings 
of Galata and Pera suggesting a modest replica 
of some American port. We coaled in primitive 
fashion at Constantinople and left on the 27th, 
arriving at Salonica on the 1st of March. Salonica, 
' the Pearl of the JEgean,' is a very doubtful 
gem. Half of it has been destroyed by fire. The 
town sea-front is mainly remarkable for a de- 
pressing succession of low-class cinemas and cafes 
chantants. The British troops in camp above 



FROM PERSIAN UPLANDS 247 

the town are in poor health, and are waiting, 
as never men waited, for demobihsation. The 
flow of uniformed humanity in the streets is 
perhaps the most varied that one could watch 
anywhere, for it includes Greeks and Serbians, 
and Bulgarian prisoners, British naval and 
military, French, Americans male and female, 
Italians, Russians, and natives of northern Africa 
and India and Cochin- China. 

I had a stay of five days at Salonica, and con- 
sidered myself lucky to get off with that. I left 
on the 6th in a glorified cattleship which had 
200 troops on board and 600 horses on the lower 
deck. We had a pleasant voyage with a cheery 
ship's company, and arrived at Marseilles on the 
11th. I left by the rapide the same evening, and 
reached Paris in eighteen hours. Four hours in 
Paris, and then home by Havre and Southampton. 
On the morning of the 18th I was travelling up to 
London, watching out of the window for signs of 
that welter of munition factories and chimney- 
stacks which the papers had led me to imagine 
was Modern England. But what I saw in the 
south was mostly the old meadows and ploughed 
fields and woodlands, the placid villages and quiet 
farms and meandering streams — only the mellow 
beauty of Old England. As we reached the heart 
of London I remarked on the dim-lit haze over- 
spreading the town, and was reminded that that 
was the normal atmosphere — a fact which I had 



248 FROM PERSIAN tJPLANDS 

almost forgotten. And I remembered arriving 
at Victoria from the Cape many years ago, in 
the thick of a viscid, yellow, impenetrable 
November fog of the worst degree — and sniflfing 
it up like the breath of heaven. 



Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh University Press 



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